“And long-term?”
“When the client hears about Marco, he’ll know he has a problem. He’ll have to speak to someone else to confirm the job or try to get his money back.”
“Did he pay it all up front?”
“Half,” Ryan said.
“So this might force his hand. Flush him out.”
“Just might.”
We drove in silence. Ryan handled the car in his usual impeccable way, ignoring the many challenges and insults other drivers dealt.
“Want me to drop you at your office?”
“Not especially,” I said.
“Home?”
In fine Jewish tradition, I answered his question with a question: “Is this over for you?”
Ryan glanced over at me, then back at the road ahead. “Is what over?”
“This-this case, I guess.”
“A case? We’re on a case? Holy fucking justice, Batman!”
“Call it what you want. You came to me because you were in a bad spot. Now Marco’s dead, maybe it’s over for you. Maybe you want to fade out somewhere and wait to see how the chips fall.”
“And you don’t?”
“I can’t. I still don’t know who killed Franny,” I said. “Or who’s running this racket. Nothing’s over for me.”
“So where to?”
“If you get in the left lane now, you can take Eglinton east.”
“Where to exactly?”
“Jay Silver’s Med-E-Mart.”
“For what?”
“A friendly chat.”
“I wouldn’t mind if it got unfriendly,” he said. “I’m all pumped up with no one to do.”
I knew exactly what he meant. My feet were tapping restlessly, my thigh muscles jumping. My biceps felt as if I’d been working them hard, though I’d lifted nothing heavier than ham steak this morning. Like a pitcher who warms up but doesn’t get into the game, I was juiced on adrenaline that had been building all morning, still taking in the fact that Marco no longer had to die at my hands.
We were taking an eastbound route I’d learned from veteran airport cabbies, making good time with few cars around to imperil us.
“Is the mob in Buffalo that much heavier than here?” I asked Ryan.
“Up until a few years ago, no question: they were the head office and we were the branch plant. Buffalo was a real power, mobwise, all the years Don Magaddino was in charge, and that’s like fifty. You know about the Don?”
“I know his name. I was briefed on his organization when the Ensign sting was being planned.”
“Don Stefano Magaddino was a member of the original national commission that laid out the structure of the organization and assigned territories to the major families. He was up there with Lucky Luciano, Joe Bonanno, Tommy Lucchese, all those guys. A cousin to Joe Bonanno, in fact. Not that it stopped them from occasionally trying to kidnap or kill each other.”
“How’d he wind up in Buffalo?”
“There was trouble in New York and he had to leave. Took a look west and moved to Buffalo. It was a happening place then and he ended up running the town and everything around it, including southern Ontario. Took that over from Rocco Perri, if the name rings a bell.”
“He the one at the bottom of Hamilton Harbour?”
“So the story goes. Everyone after that, including Johnny Papalia and Vinnie Nickels, answered to Magaddino. You want to talk smuggling? This pill business of yours is piddly compared to the booze that used to cross the river.”
“Until Prohibition ended.”
“Nothing ended. Just the commodities changed. Dope going this way, guns going that way. Cigarettes, as you well know, pinball machines, illegal aliens, whatever. When I was a kid, we made runs to Buffalo all the time. I always drove because I was the only one of my gang whose name didn’t end in a vowel. Buffalo and back, a thousand times. At first, we’d just try to bullshit our way across. Sometimes we’d order hockey tickets and dress like assholes and say we were going to watch the Leafs play the Sabres, like I’d cross the street to watch those bums. Once we were established, it got easier. We’d have a friendly border guard on a certain shift and we just had to say Mr. Lewis sent us. That was Vinnie Nickels’ brother Luciano. Uncle Looch knew every bent border guy, what shift he worked, how much you had to pay. We’d get a lane number from Looch, load up our goods and head out on a Buffalo jump.”
“A which?”
“What we called these runs of ours. Come on, we were kids. We had our own code words like everyone else. With us a smuggling trip was a Buffalo jump.”
“It means something else out west,” I said.
“Out west where?”
“Alberta. It was a kill site for Indians.”
“Hey, my kind of topic. What kind of kill site?”
“They harvested buffalo by running them over a cliff.”
“No shit.”
“This was before horses came to the New World. The Plains Indians hunted on foot with spears.”
“Not too productive.”
“No. So they came up with a system for mass killing.”
“The human spirit,” Ryan said. “You just can’t keep it down.”
“They’d fence off runways that led from the grazing area to the cliffs. Then one would imitate a buffalo calf crying in distress. The lead buffalo would move toward the sound and the herd, being a herd, would follow. Then a few guys with capes and blankets would run up behind and start a stampede down these fenced-off lanes. The leader couldn’t see what was in front of him until he roared off the cliff and dropped thirty feet onto solid rock. The whole herd would come crashing down behind him. Any that survived were finished with spears.”
“And they called it Buffalo Jump?” Ryan asked.
“Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, to be exact.”
“Yeah?” Ryan laughed. “We had a few of those too in the old days. Plenty of heads got smashed.”
“But things in Buffalo have changed, you said.”
“Since Don Magaddino passed, there’s been a different class of people at the top. No sense of vision, barely a step above union leaders. Plus half of them are in jail now. Give credit where it’s due, law enforcement has been pasting us lately. You got wiretap technology you never had. You got RICO legislation in the States. You got agencies cooperating instead of pissing up each other’s pant legs. There’s no more Teflon Dons anymore. Plenty of guys are doing serious time. You got more wise guys dying of natural causes in prison than on the street. When did that ever used to be?
“The funny thing is I’ve spent my whole life trying to prove I belong to this thing,” he said. “To their thing. Lamenting the fact that my father was Irish. That I couldn’t be made because of his name. That I had to remain an associate. Given the dirty work. The outsider’s work. Now I look around and wonder why. Why do I want to belong to this? Why did I ever? Half of them don’t have the brains God gave a sheepdog and the other half are just plain dumb. And for this so-called family I’m losing my real family, my wife and my boy, who give me more in ten minutes than Marco and his crew could in ten years. I’ve heard all their jokes. I’ve heard every war story. Do I need to hear again who they beat, who they shot, who they fucked and how much it cost?”
Ryan eased a cigarette out of his pack, lit it and opened his window a crack to draw out the smoke.
“I’m going to tell you something, Jonah Geller, on the understanding that if you repeat it to anyone, ever, I’ll hunt you down and kill you like the dog you are.”
