But Zalenski swore the last one had been sold. Casually, Lansing asked him if he could remember when, hoping that it might have been after the OPR investigation, thereby generating a fresh criminal count to use against him, a possible crowbar to pry open the sealed, collective psyche of Vanko’s squad. Zalenski couldn’t remember exactly, but suggested that Lansing call the OPR agent who had interviewed him; he was the one who bought it. As the purchase was finalized, Zalenski explained, the agent slapped him on the back and told him not to worry about the investigation. A week later he found himself reporting to Nick Vanko.
Lansing watched as Sheila walked up to her desk and checked her messages before sitting down. Each day, she seemed to look a little healthier, her face a little fuller, her color not so blanched. Maybe it was just the dim light in the office, or maybe it was her being surrounded by all those hostile males, but Lansing found something unfashionably attractive about her. Her comments about not being sexually harassed enough haunted his idle thoughts, which he dismissed as no more than a temporary distraction. But still there was that confidence about her—that unwillingness to be intimidated by anything. She gave him an almost indistinguishable nod and turned away before he could respond. She packed a few things into her briefcase and signed out.
Now, the only other person left was Garrett Egan, who had inexplicably shown up that morning at the off-site, even though he had asked for time off. Lansing had watched the squad’s latest addition most of the day as he tried to acclimate himself to the new surroundings. His movements were disjointed, like those of a visionless creature who navigated by echolocation, trying to orient himself by the memory of a sound given off in the past. Although desperate to make sense of his exile, he could now only feign being an FBI agent.
Egan’s beeper sounded. He glanced at Lansing before dialing the phone, turning his back slightly.
Parisi answered, “That you?”
“Now’s not a good time. Can I call you back?”
“Where are you at?”
Egan peeked over his shoulder at Lansing. “The office.”
“Those have to be the safest phones in the world to call from, so someone must be there.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“I’m on my way to midtown and my cell’s about dead. I really need to talk to you now because I’m going to be asked some questions. If you know what I mean.”
Egan turned toward Lansing, who appeared engrossed in paperwork. “Let me call you back.”
“Soon, right?”
“Uh-huh.” Egan picked up a piece of paper and walked toward Vanko’s office, pretending to read it as he went. Once inside, he shut the door. Lansing ran for the vault.
Parisi answered on the first ring. Just above a whisper, Egan said, “Are you and Baldovino ready?”
“As ready as we’re going to get.”
“Then we need to rehearse his interview.” He lowered his voice even further. “There’s a motel in Kearny, New Jersey, the Lamplighter. Get a room no later than seven o’clock. What kind of car you driving?”
“Why?”
“Trust, remember?”
“A black Cadillac coupe.”
“Do you know the plate number?”
“No.”
“That’s all right, there won’t be many Cadillacs in that place. New York tag, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. There’s one other thing, someone wants to meet you.”
“Are you nuts, Mike! If there’s anyone in that room besides you and Baldovino, it’ll be the last time you’ll see me.” Egan suddenly realized he was shouting. “Don’t do this,” he whispered.
“You’re going to have to meet him sooner or later. He’s the one okaying this whole thing.”
“My only concern right now is money. I don’t care if it is fifty million dollars. The odds that we’ll ever find this box are astronomical. If that happens, we’ll talk about it then. My priority right now is to make sure this doesn’t get fucked up so I wind up in prison. And that means the fewer that can testify against me, the better.” Anger raised his voice again. “In fact, you know what, I want another twenty-five thousand to go through with this. I’m risking too much on the if-come. Have it with you tomorrow night when I get there.”
“That wasn’t our deal.”
“That’s right. I was supposed to get you that map, and that was it. But you came back to me. Right now, I’m the only thing keeping this alive. And we’ve got a long way to go, so you should be worried about keeping me happy. What’s twenty-five thousand to you guys, anyway?”
Parisi didn’t like being dictated to. He also didn’t like giving up another twenty-five thousand, but the alternative was calling off the deal, which meant finding another way to stall DeMiglia, and he seriously doubted that was possible. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
Egan emerged from the office and glanced at Lansing as he left.
Lansing had heard only bits of the conversation, but had written down “Mike,” “Baldovino,” “Another 25,000 to go through with this,” and “Have it with you tomorrow night.”
He waited a few more minutes to make sure Egan was gone, and then walked back through the narrow hallways to check. His own car was the only one still there.
He went back inside to Vanko’s desk and hit the redial button. Suddenly something occurred to him: caller ID. If the phone he was calling had it, it might show a call coming from the FBI. Normal Bureau policy was to block that option on all Bureau phones, but with this squad nothing could be assumed. He got his cell phone from his briefcase and dialed the mobile number. As it rang, the display said Out of Range. Good, he thought, the off-site’s phones were blocked.
He took a deep breath and hit the redial button on Vanko’s phone. The small display window showed the number. He copied it down and hung up before the call could go through.
On the Bureau computer, he typed the phone number into the New York office’s indices. After a few seconds, the screen revealed that it came back to Michael Anthony Parisi, a capo with the Galante crime family. The number had been discovered by one of Vanko’s agents, who had surreptitiously downloaded the call history from Baldovino’s cell phone after his arrest for interstate transportation of forged instruments. The address from the telephone subscriber information had been cross-referenced to the Sons of Catania Social Club in Brooklyn, the known hangout for Parisi’s crew. Lansing remembered that during their initial meeting Vanko had offered the Baldovino case as the squad’s most recent, and virtually only, statistical accomplishment within the last year.
He retrieved Egan’s personnel file from the vault. There was just a short memo, which in the vaguest terms documented his arrest for insider trading. He was looking at jail time or, if he could make restitution, probation and a heavy fine. So plenty of motive existed to sell out. And that’s certainly what the little bit of the call he had heard sounded like.
Lansing went to Egan’s phone and checked the last call. It was the same number he had called from Vanko’s desk. Lansing hit the redial button. When it was answered, the connection was full of static like a failing cell phone. Lansing could hear traffic in the background.
“Mike Parisi, please.”
“Speaking.”
At a few minutes before nine, Lansing entered his hotel room in midtown Manhattan. He brushed his teeth and recombed his hair. He slipped off his blazer, cleaned it with a lint brush, then put it back on. After adjusting his tie in the mirror, he turned out the light and headed for the chief inspector’s room.
Cal Winston double-checked the time before opening the door. Lansing stood there, his face long and tight with attempted sternness, but his boss could see some sort of repressed pleasure in his eyes. “I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but we’ve got a major problem.”
Born and raised in Georgia, Winston had discovered early in his career that unflappability, which as a southerner he had always taken pride in, emitted an aura of command, especially among his skittish peers. He was tall and carried an extra forty pounds evenly across his frame, suggesting that he would instinctively resolve any disorder with a frontal assault. But he had learned that if he just simply nodded at crises knowingly, most problems resolved themselves, leaving him to receive credit for his grace under fire. The simulation of leadership also convinced those around him that a lot more was going on inside his head than he let on. In fact, there wasn’t.
“Come on in.” Winston’s voice indicated that he would rather it wait until morning, but “major problem” was a phrase invariably granted an immediate hearing, a rule Lansing seemed aware of.
When Lansing had finished, he said, “Well, son, you weren’t bullshittin’, were you? This is my last inspection, too. Before I go out as an SAC. Never fails, if there’s one cow pie left in the world, I’m the one meant to step in it. I suppose we should go to the ADIC and let him know.”
“With all due respect, they caught this Egan conducting insider trading, and just reassigned him. You know how this office doesn’t think it has to answer to anyone. If you go to the assistant director, he might want to pull Egan in and confront him. He’s going to accept another bribe tomorrow night, and we can catch him red-handed. This office is honeycombed with leaks and misdirected loyalties. Who knows, a secretary or a clerk could hear something about it, call Egan, and then where are we? I’m not even sure what I heard tonight would be admissible in court, so we’d have nothing.”
“You’re right about the attitude. They really do think they make the rules. Okay, I’ll go along with you and let it play out a little longer. The trick is not to be too hasty. Something like this may be as plain as the nose on your face, but if you grab him tomorrow night and he does have the money, there’s a lot of stories he and whoever he’s meeting could make up to cloud any guilt. And I suspect these New York juries are just as unpredictable. From what you’ve said, they’re working on some bigger scheme anyway.” Winston rubbed his hand along his flat chin as his speech slowed. “I guess that’s what we really need to try and uncover. Damn shame there’s an agent involved.”
Lansing could see some cautionary, bureaucratic switch being thrown. He suspected that hesitation had long been a staple of Winston’s “contemplative” leadership, and reconsideration, if given its head, would result in a retreat to the safety of inaction.
“An agent taking multiple bribes from one of the New York families for who knows what,” Lansing said. “This could wind up being huge, sir.”
“Tell me again what you heard.”
Lansing pulled out his notes. “The person called was ‘Mike,’ who I’ve identified as Mike Parisi, a Galante family capo. ‘Baldovino’ is believed to be Manny Baldovino, an associate of the family and currently pending federal charges. Also he said, ‘I want another twenty-five thousand dollars’ and ‘Have it with you tomorrow night.’ ”
“So he’s being paid at least fifty thousand dollars. That’s an awful lot of money. Do you think it’s for information?”
“That’s the most likely reason. I noticed he was reading the file on the Galante family today. I browsed through it when I first went out to the off-site. There wasn’t much classified information. Mostly generic, the kind of stuff you could have read in the newspaper. Certainly nothing I’d pay fifty thousand dollars for.”
After a few seconds, Winston gestured decisively. “Well, that’s what we’ve got to try and figure out. If we can’t come up with what he’s being paid for, a jury will laugh at us. While we’re looking into this, I should let someone back at the Bureau know what’s going on, but your argument about leaks is hard to argue with. Just so you understand, this is your baby. You’re the one who has to figure out what’s going on. We’ll call it a preliminary inquiry, so if it comes to light, you’re just checking things out to see if there’s any substance to it. Nothing more, understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Think you can handle the bumps that always come with something like this?”
“Yes, sir, I do. I’ll have to cut back on the time I spend out at the off-site, but I should still be out there as much as possible in case there’s more overhears.”
“That’s fine. We’re going to need some surveillance, and obviously we can’t use theirs. I know the SAC in Newark. We were in Cleveland together. I think I can get him to send me a couple of teams on the QT.”
“The ideal thing would be Title Threes on Egan’s home phone and on that club.”
“You’ve never gotten a wiretap, have you?”
“No.”
“It takes a month of Sundays. Plus you have to get the goddamn Department of Justice involved. Hell, the way they like to leak things, you’d be reading about it in the papers before we’re up on their phones. No, we’ll have to go with surveillance plus whatever intelligence you can pick up out there. It ain’t perfect, but the tough ones never are.”
What a role model, Lansing thought—aloof, condescending, and clueless. He couldn’t wait to become an ASAC.
24
AS THEY SAT WAITING IN ROOM 218 AT THE Lamplighter Motel, Mike Parisi watched Manny Baldovino carefully. In an act of autohypnosis, he was pushing the channel button on the remote, repeatedly working his way through the eight available stations. His eyes were focused at some point short of the screen. “Manny, you all right?”
He hit the power button and threw the remote on the other side of the bed. “Yeah, sure. I mean, I’m a little nervous, but that’s okay, right?”
“Being a little nervous is probably good.”
“Mike, I’m not bridge nervous, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Parisi’s head tilted slightly with surprise. “I know you know. When something like that happens, you think nobody notices, but I could tell the way you never sent me anywhere I had to cross over any water. So, yeah, I’m okay.”
“It’s just that this has got to be a lot of pressure on you.”
“This is just a scam. I’m not being asked to kill anybody. It’s fine.”
“You’re sure?”
Baldovino smiled. “The fuck, Mike? We need this, right? Last night, it sounded like Danny was looking to cause you a problem. Which translates into a problem for us. We were talking after you left, and we—you know—thought you might be taking one for the crew.”
The sudden endorsement surprised him, and a small rush of warmth ran up his back. “Take one for you clowns? I’d have to be an idiot. The fuck, Manny.”
“Yeah, I guess we think maybe you are.”
“I’ll assume there’s a compliment in there somewhere.”
“You’re the one always yelling at us for assuming stuff.”
“Just for that I’m going to tell you what DeMiglia wants us to do. You think that bridge thing can keep you awake at night?” In full detail, he told Manny about the underboss’s proposed diamond vault robbery.
When he had finished, Manny shook his head. “This is my fault. This all began with me getting arrested.”
“You didn’t bring this on. It has nothing to do with you,” Parisi said. He took in a deep breath while he considered what he was about to say. “I don’t want this going any farther, do you understand?” Baldovino nodded. “If it got back to DeMiglia that I know about this, I’d be finding the Mafia graveyard the hard way. Do you understand?”
“Absolutely.”
Parisi explained everything that DeMiglia was doing, and had done, to become boss, including the murder of Buffalo capo Frankie Falcone.
“That would explain why he’d order you to do something as crazy as hitting a place in the diamond district.”
“The don just needs a little time, so that’s why I’ve been trying anything I can to delay DeMiglia.”
Manny sat quietly for a few seconds. “Does that mean that you’ve been going along with t
he treasure thing just to keep him from making his move? Don’t you think my father’s map is real?”
“Not much is getting by you lately, is it? Actually, I’m fairly certain the map is real, it’s been checked. But yes, I have been using it to slow DeMiglia down.”
“Fair enough, Mike. And don’t worry, I’m not going to let you down.”
There was a soft knock at the door. Parisi checked the peephole, then let Garrett Egan in. Not quite convinced of their alliance, the two men shook hands with some uncertainty. “You’re right on time. This is Manny,” Parisi said, trying to sound at ease.
Baldovino stood up and shook hands. “How are you?”
Egan pulled his hand back and could feel Baldovino’s sweat evaporating on it. He wanted to wipe it off, but knew that it would be insulting. The optimism he had talked himself into on the way over was quickly sinking. He had to be crazy to think that they could pull this off. “How do you feel about doing this?” The question was abrupt, suspicious.
“It was my old man’s map. Even though it seems like everyone and their brother is getting a piece of it, I know nobody’s getting anything unless I do this right.”
Egan pursed his lips. “That’s good. Keep reminding yourself of that. Just remember, if at any time you feel your knees buckling, you’ve got to let somebody know so we can pull out. But once we get past a certain point, there is no reverse gear.”