The Big Scam Read online

  “To a liquor store. I’ve got to get my own camping supplies.”

  With about two hours of daylight left, three Cadillacs and a Lincoln pulled into the Sleeping Bear Campgrounds off Route 28 in Phoenicia. Dellaporta pulled himself from behind the wheel of his new Lincoln and stretched his back from side to side. Manny pushed himself out of the passenger’s seat. “Why you blaming me, Gus? I’m supposed to know all the hotels would be booked for a—what was it, Tommy?”

  Ida had just exited Parisi’s Caddy. “A Washington Irving festival.”

  “The fuck was Washington Irving?” Dellaporta asked. “That’s not that civil rights guy, is it?”

  “Christ, Gus,” Ida said. “You know, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Rip Van Winkle.”

  Turning to Baldovino, Dellaporta said, “I’d like to Rip Van Winkle you, give you the nine-millimeter nap.”

  Manny went around to the trunk of Dellaporta’s car and opened the lid. “I know Mike wants to get an early start in the morning so we can get back to the city by tomorrow night, but this is crazy.” Everyone was out of the cars now. “Mike,” Baldovino yelled over, “where do you want this stuff set up?”

  Parisi looked around briefly and spotted a large clearing with a stone ring for a campfire with wood already stacked in it. “Over there by the fire thing. Must be part of the rental deal. I’m going to go pay this guy and ask him if there’s anyone around who might be able to help us find, you know, what we’re looking for.”

  “Make sure you ask him where the men’s room is,” Jimmy Tatorrio said.

  After he was out of earshot, Dellaporta said, “I love a man who’s in charge.” He reached inside his trunk and took out a long belt, which he wrapped around the elastic waistband of his jogging suit, an outdoor concession from his usual sport coat.

  Tatorrio stood watching him, clearly amused. Dellaporta took out a stainless steel automatic and slipped it into the back of his pants under his jacket. “Hey, Gus, we’re going to the sleeping bags, not the mattresses.”

  “The fuck’s the name of this place, moron?”

  “Ah, Sleeping Bear Campgrounds?”

  “That’s right. And you know how those old Indians were, they named things by what they saw. And I don’t care if they are sleeping, because with that big mouth of yours, I’m sure you’ll wake them up. I’m just getting ready.”

  “I’m a moron? There aren’t any bears here. The guy who owns this place probably named it.”

  “Have it your way, Jimmy, but when some pissed-off grizzly has got ahold of you by that bony ass of yours, don’t be waking me up.”

  The group started toward the site, their arms clumsily wrapped around sleeping bags and tents. Coming around a stand of full hemlocks, they found that a half-dozen tents had been set up next to the campfire site. “Hey, Gus, somebody’s already here,” Manny said.

  Dellaporta and Tatorrio walked up. “When they get back, Jimmy and I will see if they don’t want to move.” Tatorrio opened his arms and let everything fall to the ground. “Manny, the fuck’s those sausages? I’m hungry.”

  Tatorrio, as anyone on the crew could attest, was always hungry, as if his metabolism burned not only fat but the muscle that clung to his skeletal frame. His arms were grotesquely undeveloped, his hands not much more than long, awkward pincers.

  “I still think we should of got hot dogs. That’s what you eat when you camp, hot dogs,” Baldovino said.

  “First of all, you eat hot dogs when you go to a ball game or after you beat on some guy what’s late with a payment. Second of all, we’re not camping. We’re…just stuck. And third, do you know what they put in hot dogs?”

  “Those were one hundred percent beef.”

  “Everything on a cow is considered one hundred percent beef, even the eyelids and armpits.”

  “Cows don’t have arms,” Manny mumbled. “Besides,” his voice gained strength as he found logic in the point he was about to make, “you think there’s nothing but filet meat in that sausage?”

  “Don’t start on my sausage, Enzo makes it up special for me.”

  “Enzo? Enzo the gambler? Enzo who you tuned up once for not covering his bets? Oh, yeah, it’s a good thing you didn’t get the hot dogs. You never know what’s in them.”

  Parisi came walking up. “What’s with the other tents?”

  “I guess we’re claiming squatters’ rights,” Ida said, pointing at Tatorrio, who was using a switchblade to cut a loaf of French bread into sandwich-length pieces.

  Tatorrio said, “Manny, you gonna want some sausage?”

  “Sure.”

  “Now you gonna want it cooked or raw?”

  Manny held up his hands to deflect any further orders. “I’ll build the fire.”

  Ida asked Parisi, “Did the owner know anything?”

  “I tried to act like I was just curious and told him I heard there was some old gangster’s treasure buried around here somewhere and pretended not to be that interested. He kind of smirked like it happened all the time. He showed me how to get to where the creek and railroad tracks were closest together. Like on the map. We’ll go over there first thing in the morning.”

  A half hour later, Manny was still trying to get the fire started. Tatorrio had trimmed a reasonably straight branch into a cooking utensil and a flaccid pink and white link of Italian sausage drooped from the sharpened end, awaiting the miracle of fire. “If I die from hunger tonight, just before my lights go out, I’m borrowing Gus’s piece and popping you.”

  For what seemed like the hundredth time, Manny struck his disposable lighter and lit a small tuft of dry grass. He blew on it gently, trying to get it to ignite. “You know, until this very minute,” Gus said, “I could never understand why our crew never got into the arson business.”

  Manny ignored him. Suddenly they heard the sound of slow, steady movement. Dellaporta drew his handgun as a man in a scout leader’s shirt and blue jeans broke through the edge of the clearing. He was followed by a snaking line of boys in dark blue Cub Scout shirts and bright yellow kerchiefs, which had been knotted with as much uniformity as could be expected from nine- and ten-year-olds. The first boy behind the leader was carrying the troop guidon, a pennant of the same predominant yellow. When the scoutmaster saw the men, he held up his hand to halt the boys. As fast as it had been drawn, Dellaporta’s gun disappeared. “Hello,” the leader said with uncertainty.

  Parisi hurried over to him. “I’m sorry, are we in your area here?”

  “No, I’m sure there’s plenty of room for everyone.”

  “Hey, Chief,” Tatorrio called out, “any of your men there got their badge in starting fires?”

  Parisi looked at the fire pit and then the man. “Jesus, I’m sorry, your boys probably put all that wood in there.”

  “It’s okay, one of the things they don’t get badges for is sharing. This’ll be good for the boys.”

  Parisi smiled warmly. “That’s awfully nice. When you get them settled for the night, we’ll buy you a drink.”

  The scoutmaster looked over his shoulder and in a low voice said, “I’ll be needing one. Thanks.”

  As dusk settled over the Catskills, the air cooled, bringing everyone closer to the fire. As the flames found pockets of resin in the pine logs, they sputtered orange-white and sent up silky helixes of smoke. The scouts, prodded by their leader, started introducing themselves. Not sure of Cosa Nostra–Cub Scout etiquette, or how secret his crew’s reconnaissance was, Jimmy Tatorrio gave his fellow campers the alias he had used during his Mohegan Sun junket, Johnny Waylon.

  He passed out more sausages to the kids than he had intended and received cracked, blackened hot dogs in exchange. Some of Parisi’s crew sneaked off to their ill-slung tents to lace their soft drinks and coffee with whiskey. Dellaporta thinly disguised his bottle in a brown paper bag and, as usual, ate nothing.

  When it was good and dark, the natural but uncertain sounds of the woods had a marshaling effect, and Scoutmaster Bob, enc
ouraged by his third cup of “coffee,” told the all-too-familiar ghost story that ended with the killer’s prosthetic hook hanging from the couple’s car door.

  One of the scouts, dreading more of the same, said, “How about you, Mr. Waylon, I’ll bet you know some great ghost stories.”

  “I don’t know, kid. I think all the ones I know are R-rated.”

  “Yeah,” the other boys chimed in, wanting to hear them more than ever.

  The scoutmaster smiled dizzily. “Yeah, Mr. Waylon, come on.”

  “Well, okay. Let’s see…Once there was this man who lived in the city, in Brooklyn as a matter of fact. His name was Billy the Weasel, excuse me, William the Weasel.” The boys giggled, leaning closer to the fire. “He had made many friends among the poor people by lending them money and charging only seven and a half percent. He was known as a man of great compassion and wisdom because of his understanding when someone was a little late with the vig.”

  “What’s the vig?” the same boy asked.

  Tatorrio looked over to the scoutmaster in an appeal for a change of subject, but Bob just stared back drunkenly, apparently as interested as the boys. “See, it’s what you owe at the end of the week for what you borrowed. It’s like rent, only on the money. It’s a good thing. That way the borrower doesn’t have to come up with the whole nut, and the lender makes those points every week.”

  A chubby boy with glasses asked, “Isn’t that type of loan considered usury?”

  “Ah, sure. You can use it for whatever you want. Just don’t be late at the end of the week. Because then you’ve got to look at some ugly mutt like Gus here. And he won’t be bringing hot dogs when he comes, if you know what I mean.” The boys laughed harder, delighted at being made part of the story.

  Fearing Tatorrio’s well-known lack of restraint in front of an audience, Dellaporta, in a strained whisper, which everyone could hear, said, “What the F is wrong with you, telling these kids about me? That one with the glasses probably just decided to become a federal prosecutor.”

  Tatorrio took a couple more swallows and examined each of the boys’ faces. He looked over at Baldovino. “Hey, Manny, I think Gus is right, isn’t the redhead one of the Feds that locked you up?” The kids all twittered, and a couple of them slapped the “Fed” on the back.

  Baldovino walked over to the boy. “Stand up.” Fighting off laughter, the boy stood up, barely coming up to Manny’s chest. “He’s about the right age, but he’s a foot too tall.”

  Tatorrio said, “Any of you guys wearing a wire? Mr. Dellaporta here is worried.” The men’s laughter drowned out the boys’.

  “And now you give them my name? You are a moron, Mr. Waylon.” Dellaporta turned to the kids. “You want to know his real name—”

  Mike Parisi interrupted. “Gus, let’s keep things in perspective here.”

  “Yeah, Gus,” Tatorrio said. “We’re just telling a story here.”

  “Go ahead, Jimmy,” Parisi said. “Finish up so the kids can get some sleep.”

  “Anyway, boys, don’t worry too much about the finer points of banking. You’ll learn all that stuff in college. Now back to William the Weasel. While he made many needy people happy, it made rival businessmen very sad because they had always lent money at ten percent. So they decided to do something about it. They got ahold of two, ah, customer service representatives and told them to have a little talk with the Weasel and convince him to either change his rates or, even better, maybe find another line of work. So they drove him over to Staten Island and discussed future business strategies. But William didn’t like the tone of the meeting, so he went to those bad people at the FBI and told them about how the other businessmen were charging ten percent and everything else he knew about their operation. When the businessmen heard of this they were very, very upset. So they called in the customer service reps again and told them to make their problems go away permanently—if you know what I mean.” A burst of laughter told Tatorrio that no further explanation was necessary. “So they took William up to these very woods, and he was never seen again. The end.”

  “What kind of ghost story is that? It’s supposed to end with something scary,” Dellaporta said.

  “What, you don’t think some guy lending at seven and a half per is scary?”

  “You’re supposed to scare the kids, not us, moron.”

  “Okay, okay.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “When the service reps brought him up to the woods—and I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, it was to clip the Weasel—they asked him if he had a last wish. Without hesitating, he said he wanted some Italian sausage. The last thing anyone knows is that the three of them were sitting around, on a night just like tonight, cooking sausage. The next day they were all found with their stomachs ripped out. Supposedly something in these woods got all three of them. Something that’s attracted to campfires and the smell of freshly cooked Italian sausage. They say it can smell it on your breath while you’re sleeping.”

  Dellaporta looked directly at the boy with the glasses and smiled. “Man, am I glad I didn’t have any sausage.”

  It was after ten a.m. before anyone from Parisi’s crew crawled out of the tents. The first one up was Jimmy Tatorrio. He discovered that the scouts had broken camp and were gone. The rest of them rose stiffly, with no espresso or even coffee to comfort them. Parisi told them to pack up and get in their cars. He ran his papery tongue over his dry mouth and watched them stumble around clumsily, complaining, stretching their backs, running their hands over unshaved chins and attempting to reshape their hair without gels or creams or hair dryers. They were obviously incapable of functioning in any setting outside the slender, dark crevice of organized urban crime. Had they wanted to escape, he doubted if they ever could. Their lifestyles imprisoned them. Those Cub Scouts were more self-reliant, more self-assured than his crew, who seemed more like a collection of characters in a failing comedy. Walking over to the clearing where the scouts had pitched their tents, he couldn’t detect any evidence that they had been there, while his area was strewn with the debris of a different civilization. He packed up his own gear, taking a little extra time to do it neatly.

  Parisi got in his car and had the others follow him to the landmarks indicated on Manny’s map. While he, Manny, and Ida spent the next hour trying to figure out how the Rosenkranz map connected to the terrain, Dellaporta and Tatorrio stood around watching them. “Maybe we should give them a hand,” Tatorrio said.

  “Yeah,” Dellaporta said, “let’s encourage them. Then we can all become one with the land. Maybe even stay another night or two. I’m sure Manny will be able to start a fire eventually.”

  When it became apparent that they could not find even the most marginal starting point, Parisi admitted, “We can’t figure this out. Anyone have any ideas?”

  “Yeah,” said Tatorrio, “I was thinking about some nice veal for lunch. Maybe a little wine.”

  “Anyone else?” Parisi said, dismissing the humor, feeling like an outsider again.

  Dellaporta said, “Hey, we had to give it a shot. And we did. It didn’t work out, so we go back to the city where we belong, doing what we do.”

  Parisi knew he was right, but going back meant dealing with DeMiglia. Then an idea came to him. Maybe Dutch Schultz’s elusive treasure wasn’t a worthless myth after all.

  16

  THE DOOR TO LIBERTY LOAN SWUNG OPEN AND Jack Straker walked in wearing a suit. Sam Kasdan attempted to flatten his expression, but Straker sensed a small rush of anticipation in the pawnbroker. Kasdan considered everyone who came through that door an impending business transaction. This one, however, had nothing to do with money. He allowed himself a small grin. “Looks like someone got a haircut.”

  Straker ran his hand through the back of his hair where the fake ponytail had hung the night before. “It didn’t go with my official look.”

  “You mean the suit? I hope my three hundred dollars didn’t buy that.”

  “When I get to know y
ou better, I’ll tell you exactly what your money bought.”

  “As much as I would like to hear the intimate details of your life, with all due respect, I’d prefer to never see you again.”

  “As luck would have it, I’ve come to offer you exactly that. And before you say no, you should know it was me who made sure you got out on that PR bond.”

  “You seem to be skipping over the part that you were the reason I needed bail.”

  “We’ve all got a business to run.”

  “Fair enough. Let’s hear the offer.”

  “Danny DeMiglia.”

  “Why would I want to trade my little problem for one that size? My lawyer says I’m looking at probation—if convicted. And because of entrapment, that’s a fairly large if.”

  “Let me save you some legal fees. It probably was entrapment, but see, the whole problem is when I get on the stand and the prosecutor asks me why we targeted you, I’ll have to tell the jury that we were trying to get at DeMiglia. So then it’s in the public record—law enforcement sees you as a link to the Galante family underboss. And I think you know that Danny’s a big believer in missing links.”

  “What is it exactly that you want from me?”

  “Judge Ferris.” Kasdan started to protest his ignorance, but Straker held up a hand. “We don’t think you know anything about it, we’re just looking for a starting point with DeMiglia.”

  “Someplace you can wiretap.”

  “You know I can’t admit something like that.”

  “How do I know these receiving and concealing charges will be dropped?”

  “What, this doesn’t look like a trustworthy face?”

  “If I was able to judge your face more accurately, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  “Point taken. Just give me something that I can use, and I guarantee that before I leave, your problem will be gone.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “Sorry, you’ll have to pay to see my hole card.”

  “And my name?”

  “Nowhere to be found.”