Dead Man's Grip

the white van which had disappeared from the scene, having gone through a red light and struck the cyclist. So far, he reported, there were two possible sightings of the van from CCTV cameras in the area, but neither was of sufficient quality, even with image enhancement, to provide legible registration numbers.

The first sighting was of a Ford Transit van, matching the description, heading fast in a westerly direction from the scene, less than thirty seconds after the collision. The second, one minute later, showed a van, missing its driver’s wing mirror, making a right turn half a mile on. This was significant, Biggs told them, because of pieces of a wing mirror recovered from the scene. Its identity was now being traced from a serial number on the casing. That was all he had to go on so far.

‘There’s a Home Office post-mortem due to start in about an hour’s time,’ Grace said, ‘which Glenn Branson, temporarily deputizing for me, will attend, along with Tracy Stocker and the Coroner’s Officer.’ He looked at Glenn, who grimaced.

Then Glenn Branson raised his hand. Grace nodded at him.

‘Boss, I’ve just spoken to the Family Liaison Officer from Traffic who’s been assigned to this,’ he said. ‘He’s just had a phone call from an officer in the New York Police Department. The deceased, Tony Revere, was a US citizen, doing a business studies degree at Brighton University. Now, I don’t know if this is going to have any significance, but the deceased’s mother’s maiden name is Giordino.’

All eyes were on him.

‘Does that name mean anything to anyone?’ Glenn asked, looking at each of the faces.

They all shook their heads.

‘Sal Giordino?’ he then asked.

There was still no recognition.

‘Anyone see The Godfather?’ Branson went on.

This time they all nodded.

‘Marlon Brando, right? The Boss of Bosses? The Godfather, right? The Man. The Capo of Capos?’

‘Yes,’ Grace said.

‘Well, that’s who her dad is. Sal Giordino is the current New York Godfather.’

21

Standard protocol on receipt of notification of the death of a US citizen overseas was for the NYPD’s Interpol office to inform the local police force where the next of kin resided and they would then deliver the death message. In the case of Tony Revere, this would have been Suffolk County Police, which covered the Hamptons.

But anything involving a high-profile family such as the Giordinos was treated differently. There were computer markers on all known Mob family members, even distant cousins, with contact details for the particular police departments and officers that might currently be interested.

Detective Investigator Pat Lanigan, of the Special Investigations Unit of the Office of the District Attorney, was seated at his Brooklyn desk when the call from a detective in the Interpol office came through. Lanigan was online, searching through the affordable end of the Tiffany catalogue, trying to decide on a thirtieth anniversary present for his wife, Francene. But within seconds he picked up his pen and was focusing 100 per cent on the call.

A tall man of Irish descent, with a pockmarked face, a greying brush-cut and a Brooklyn accent, Lanigan had started life in the US Navy, then worked as a stevedore on the Manhattan wharves before joining the NYPD. He had the rugged looks of a movie tough guy and a powerful physique that meant few people were tempted to pick a fight with him.

At fifty-four, he’d had some thirty years’ experience of dealing with the Wise Guys – the term the NYPD used for the Mafiosi. He knew personally many of the rank and file in all the Mob families, partly helped by his having been born and raised in Brooklyn, where the majority of them – the Gambinos, Genoveses, the Colombos, Lucheses, Bonnanos and Giordinos – lived.

Back in the 1970s, soon after he’d first joined the NYPD, Lanigan had been assigned to the team hunting down the killers of mobster Joe Gallo, several years on from his death. The mobster had been shot in a retaliation killing during a meal in Umberto’s Clam House in Little Italy. But he’d found it hard to feel too much sympathy for the man. Crazy Joey, as he had been known, kept a full-grown lion in his basement. He used to starve it for three days, then introduce his debtors to the snarling creature, asking them if they would like to pay up what they owed him or play with his pet.

From that point on, Lanigan had spent most of his career to date on busting the Mafia.

He listened to the information that the Interpol officer relayed. He didn’t like the hit-and-run part. Retaliation was a big part of Mob culture. Each of the families had its enemies, the old, historic rivals, as well as new ones created almost daily. He decided that the best way to see if that line of thought had any relevance would be to take a ride to East Hampton and check out the family himself. He liked to visit Wise Guys in their lairs. You got to see a different side of them than you did in a police interview room. And delivering the shock message just might make one of them blurt out a giveaway.

Thirty minutes later, having washed down the chicken pasta salad his wife had made him with a Diet Coke followed by a shot of coffee, he tightened his necktie, pulled on his sports coat and scooped up his regular work buddy, Dennis Bootle. Then they headed out to the parking lot and climbed into an unmarked, sludge-brown Ford Crown Victoria.

Pat Lanigan was an Obama man who spent much of his free time doing charity work for wounded veterans. Dennis Bootle was a diehard Republican who spent most of his free time as an activist for the pro-gun lobby and out hunting. Although two years older than his colleague, Bootle had hair a youthful straw-blond colour, styled in a boyish quiff. Unlike Lanigan, who despite all his dealings with the Mafia had deliberately never once fired his handgun in all his years in service, Bootle had shot three people, on three different occasions, killing two of them. They were chalk and cheese. They argued constantly. Yet they were close.

As Lanigan started the engine and accelerated forward, a twelve-inch square of cardboard printed with the words on BROOKLYN D.A. BUSINESS slid off the top of the dash and fell on to Bootle’s lap. Bootle stuck it on the rear seat, face down, saying nothing. He was a taciturn man and had moods in which he remained silent, sometimes for hours. But he never missed a thing.

As they headed off, Bootle suddenly said, ‘What’s this sound like to you?’

Lanigan shrugged. ‘Dunno. You?’

Bootle shrugged. ‘Sounds to me like a hit. Got hit written all over it.’

The early-afternoon traffic on Long Island was light and it stayed that way during the next ninety minutes as they approached the Hamptons. In high season, this stretch of road would be slow, the traffic fender to fender. Relaxed, Lanigan steered the car along the lush shrub- and grass-lined freeway with one hand, keeping a wary eye on the exit signs, distrustful of the occasional instructions of the satnav he had stuck to the windshield.

Bootle had a new girlfriend who was rich, he told Pat, and had a big spread in Florida. He was planning to retire and move down there with her. The news made Pat sad, because he would miss his buddy. He did not want to think about retirement just yet – he loved his job too much.

The satnav was showing a right turn ahead, as the trees and shrub gave way to the outskirts of East Hampton, with its large houses, set well back from the road, and then a parade of white-painted, expensive-looking shops. They turned right in front of a Mobil Oil garage and headed along a leafy lane with a double yellow line down the middle.

‘You know what you can guarantee about the Hamptons?’ Bootle said suddenly, in his clipped Bostonian accent, breaking twenty minutes of silence.

‘Uh? What’s that?’ Lanigan always sounded like he was rolling a couple of marbles around in his mouth.

Bootle nodded at a vast colonial-style mansion with a colonnaded portico. ‘You ain’t going to find any retired NYPD guys living in this area!’

‘This isn’t ordinary Wise Guy terrain either,’ Pat Lanigan retorted.

‘This kid’s mother, she’s married to Lou Revere, right?’

‘Uh huh.’