If the set up had been a test of some sort, they would both report back to Rod with exactly what Hannibal wanted him to hear.
Hannibal was already reaching for his car door handle when he realized how close his bumper was to the big black Cadillac Escalade parked in front of him. Plenty of adrenaline was already pumping through his system and if some clown had so much as dusted the white tornado’s bumper there would be hell to pay. He stepped forward and looked down. The SUV was backed to within an inch of his car. He looked up, casting a nasty glare at the tinted windows. When the well-dressed drive stepped down to the street Hannibal felt encouraged. He was big enough to hit. He had the black hair and uneven complexion of a Sicilian and his suit and shoes proclaimed his loyalty to his Italian brothers.
“You got a problem?” Hannibal asked. “Move this piece of shit.”
As if he hadn’t heard Hannibal’s words, the driver said, “Get in. Boss wants to talk to you.”
“Why don’t you put me in the car, dickhead?” Hannibal said, taking a step back to firm his stance. The driver remained still, and the back door popped open. The occupant looked back at Hannibal, scanning him up and down.
“I hardly recognized you, stud. But if you’re still on that case, I got something you want.” Anthony Ronzini leaned out of the car. “Come take a ride with me, and let me tell you something about your prey.”
18
“You packing?” the driver asked. His arms were folded in such a way that his right hand could have been resting on the butt of a gun in a shoulder holster.
“And you are?”
“They call me Wheels. You packing?”
“Right ankle,” Hannibal said. The driver nodded, and Hannibal bent to raise his pants and slowly pull the Smith and Wesson Model 42 Centennial Airweight revolver from its holster. He took the gun by its two-inch barrel and tossed it to the driver. “I’ll need that back.”
“Who else would want it?” Wheels asked, pocketing the piece. “Cell phone?” Hannibal tossed his phone too. Wheels sneered at it. “Pager?” Hannibal shook his head. “Blackberry?” Again, Hannibal shook his head. Wheels gave him a dismissive puff of air, pocketed the phone and got back in the driver’s seat. Hannibal stepped up into the back seat beside Ronzini.
Hannibal was not comfortable getting into Ronzini’s vehicle without backup. He didn’t like the look of the driver, or the expression on the face of the bruiser in the shotgun seat, whom he knew as Freddy. They both remembered how Hannibal had taken Ronzini out of a car at gunpoint with Freddy helpless to interfere. He especially didn’t like going anywhere with Ronzini without someone else knowing where he would be. But he understood the rules of this game. Now that Ronzini appeared to have come through for him, he knew he would just have to play it out and trust to the old gangster’s honor.
“Can I ask where we’re going?”
“Sure, sure,” Ronzini said in a manner that seemed a bit too gracious. “A friend of mine has a nice little place down at the south end of the beach. We’ll talk there.”
They rode in silence for twenty minutes or so before turning into a driveway at the edge of the coast. A breeze blew in off the ocean and the air was crisp with salt and that odd electricity that seems to blow in off the Atlantic. The sky was just beginning to darken and Hannibal stood for a moment staring out to infinity where the ocean seemed to merge with the firmament. He thought he saw a dolphin break the surface but he might have been mistaken. If not, then the ocean itself was laughing at him from far away. Cool, damp air whipped around him, energizing him. He was still until Wheel’s waved him inside.
In Hannibal’s eyes the beach house was a transplanted mansion. He followed Ronzini and Wheels through a vast living room to a formal dining room, aware of Freddie behind him but not turning to look at him. Wheels kept on to the kitchen, but Ronzini turned off at a formal dining room. He settled in to the chair at the head of the table, so Hannibal dropped onto the one at the other end. While Freddie placed an ashtray and cigar at Ronzini’s elbow, Hannibal heard an espresso machine making its locomotive sounds in the kitchen. He sat patiently, because to do otherwise would be disrespectful.
Wheels placed huge cups of cappuccino in front of Ronzini and Hannibal. Freddie laid a folder full of loose papers at Ronzini’s left. Then both men left the room. This, from Ronzini, was a conspicuous show of respect in return. Respect, and trust.
Hannibal sipped from his cup, smiled as the rich flavor filled his mouth, and then sat up straight. “Okay, so I’ve met our boy, and he’s everything I expected. Now, what else do I need to know?”
“You need to know who this man is,” Ronzini said, using a penknife blade to snip the end of his cigar. “You need to know the path this Roderick Mantooth is on, so you can see how your path intersects it.”
Hannibal settled back in the wooden chair, crossing his ankles under the table. “He’s on the fast track to hell. He’s just a mean, tough street punk. Like you.”
Ronzini struck a wooden match and lit his cigar. “Well, same streets anyway. Brooklyn. Dyker Heights. Bensonhurst. But he’s really an ambitious tough guy with tunnel vision, who can’t see his real part in the big picture. Like you.”
“So it all starts in your old neighborhood,” Hannibal said. The dense cloud of smoke made him crinkle his nose.
Ronzini didn’t seem to notice. He pulled a pair of reading glasses from an inside jacket pocket and opened the folder. “It starts in 1989, the first time cops pinch a sixteen year old named Rodney Johannsen for stealing a car. He pleads guilty to a reduced charge and…” Ronzini raised his eyebrows toward Hannibal.
“His record is wiped clean,” Hannibal said in disgust. “This is how the justice systems gets petty thieves off to a good start.”
“Right,” Ronzini said, puffing his cigar again. “Two years later he gets busted for assault. The guy he beat half to death was an off duty cop. Then he starts getting big ideas. By 1992 he caught my attention by stealing a couple of ATM machines.”
“Robbing,” Hannibal said, correcting Ronzini by reflex.
“No, stealing. He got a bulldozer and some chains and yanked them right out of the walls.”
Hannibal’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding. Nobody’s that arrogant, not that young.”
“Hell, that’s just the part the cops know. I know he spent a year up in the Bronx. Friends told me he sold a hundred pounds of weed to some drug dealer, then turned around and stole it back. Hell of a way to raise starter capital. And when he comes back to Brooklyn in ’94 he’s Roderick Mantooth. He’s what, twenty at this point, and we get word he robbed a guy by bashing his head in with a baseball bat.”
“Still a punk,” Hannibal said in a thoughtful tone, “But you can see he kept on chasing the big score.” Hannibal had resented the lecture form of Ronzini’s presentation at the start. Now he was starting to see patterns and gain new understanding of the man he had spent the afternoon with. Ronzini shuffled sheets of paper, his glasses sliding low on his nose. Sometimes Hannibal saw him as a gangster, but other times he looked like a businessman. Right then, he looked a bit scholarly. A senior professor, tenured in the crime department, Hannibal thought.
“Now we’re up to ’94,” Ronzini continued, “and our boy Mantooth has a gang together. They’re doing the usual petty break-ins, mostly up in the Bronx and out in Staten Island. Then they decide to rob a bank in a mall. They do it Mantooth style, busting in the door with sledgehammers.”
“Tell me they caught him.”
“Boy lives a charmed life,” Ronzini said. “Bank reported a loss of three hundred grand. I figure they padded by about a third. You’d think that was the big score for this jamoke, but his crew stayed in business, stealing cars, shaking people down, doing odd jobs for the local mob. Then a couple months later he’s driving the getaway car for more home invasions out on the island. That seems to have stopped after they found someone home. A woman was shot in the head. Not sure if it was him or one of his crew. Anyway, I think the crew fell apart after that.”
“Even the bad guys don’t want to hang with this wacko,” Hannibal said. He and Ronzini lifted their cups at the same time, sipped, and put them down. Something about that made Hannibal uncomfortable.
