Читать книгу Angel of Death - Christian Russell - Страница 9

CHAPTER FIVE

Wednesday, October 14

When Mark reached his office that morning he heard the hubbub just before going in. Dumpy Kulikovski, the fifth member of D2 squad, had returned from Hawaii. He had dressed up Mary and Arty with colorful garlands and now they were all trying to do the ‘hula.’

“Hey, where do you think you are?” Mark asked, trying to look serious. The noise went down a little. “Welcome, Dumpy!” he greeted the agent who now weighed over 260 pounds. “How was Hawaii?”

“Great, Mark! I had everything a man could wish for himself and his family: sun for my wife, beer and hamburgers for me, sand and water for the kids. Even some sharks for my mother-in-law,” he giggled.

Dumpy was facing retirement. No one knew how he had come to be an FBI agent. It was he who had launched the famous saying, “Never get in your boss’s way without a file in your hand.” The other agents would joke saying the only way he would ever get hurt was if he cut himself with a sheet of paper. He hated the computer in the office. “To me,” he would say, “progress stopped with the fridge and the toaster.”

Sometimes if you looked into his eyes, you could see him anxious and fearful as if the entire human race was out to get him. Even if he gave the impression of a Philistine, Dumpy had a big heart and was always ready to help if he could. Due to his colossal appetite he was wolfing all kinds of food most of the time. Even now he was biting into a Big Mac.

Mary, the medical ‘expert’ of the office, tried to talk him out of it. “Haven’t you heard of cholesterol?”

“Yes, I have. Isn’t it that stuff they put inside burgers to make them taste better?” He stopped chewing a few seconds to humor her then went on. “What can I do? Some people are addicted to heroine; I’m addicted to hamburgers.”

The woman looked disappointed. “I don’t know what we’re going to do about you. You’re probably bent on setting a new world record. I can almost hear you growing fat.”

“By the way, Dumpy,” Steimberg cut in. “Ten years ago when you came here you were much thinner. How did you get to be an XXL?”

“Well,” the Pole thought back. “I was poor back then and my wife was young and beautiful.”

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with it!” Arty said.

“Well, back then when I opened the fridge and looked inside, I shut it back and got in bed next to my wife. Now I want to get in bed with her but when I lift the blanket and see what’s under it I give up and go to the fridge instead!”

They all burst out laughing.

“Shame on you, Dumpy, to speak like that about your own wife,” Mary reprimanded him like a true feminist. “As long as we’re young and beautiful you treat us like princesses. Years after, when we are fat and wrinkled, you throw us away like we were withered flowers and seek refuge in the arms of your mistresses.”

“Bullshit!” Dumpy said trying to defend himself. “Mistresses you said? I wish! I don’t think I could find one, not even in a women’s prison. As for getting old, you’ve nothing to worry about, Mary. In twenty years’ time you’ll still have the Viagra effect on men.”

Mary blushed slightly. “Stop that, you, jerk!” she pretended to get angry.

“Let’s get to work, shall we?” Mark cut their merrymaking short. “Arty, have you found out who the Majestic assassins are?”

“Yes, the dead one is Randy Garr and the one in hospital is Mario Vinotti. They both belong to the Genovese clan. They’re Rudy Weiss’s men, to be more precise.”

“What?” Mark stretched his eyes in surprise. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. I’ve talked to Monelli, the agent who busted Weiss last year. He recognized them in the pictures on the spot.”

“Hmm, that’s strange, very strange,” Mark mumbled. “Sean, which hospital is he in?”

“Bellevue, where Vinotti is also under surveillance.”

“In that case, you and me are going to pay them a visit. Maybe we’ll find something new.”

“And what am I supposed to do?” Mary asked.

“You’ll try to find out as much as you can about Weiss. We might pay him a visit when we get back from the hospital.”

Meanwhile Dumpy had finished his second hamburger. He was full for the time being so he started paying attention to what was going on in the office. “It’s kind of boring without Sean around. Don’t you miss him?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, like we’d miss a headache,” Arty answered.

* * * * * * *

As they were walking down the corridors in Bellevue, Mark was thrilled to find that, wherever he was or whatever he did, Dorothy Wheller was on his mind all the time. At the table, under the shower, or even at the office, his mind was filled with her charming presence. Sometimes he felt he was going crazy, with all those tempting pictures he recalled. His feelings subjected one after the other, Mark felt helpless for the first time in his life.

When they got to Sean’s ward, a young appetizing blonde was just coming out. Arty and Mark knocked at the door, then went in. Paulardis, dressed in navy blue pajamas, was bent over a small table looking through a magazine.

“Hi, Sean,” Mark said. “Life’s good here at Bellevue, isn’t it? They’ve even provided you with navy blue pajamas and nudie magazines! By the way, who’s that blonde babe we saw walking out of here just now?”

“She’s quite a stunner, ain’t she?” the Greek murmured admiringly. “Good looking but not available. Yesterday I asked her if I could take her out to dinner next Saturday. She said I’d better ask my doctor.”

“And did you?”

“No, thank God for that! Another patient told me he’s her fiancé.”

“I’m glad you’ve still got your sense of humor about you. I was afraid they might have taken it out,” Mark said.

Arty produced a big bag of exotic fruits. “Here, choke on them!”

“When are they going to let you go?” Mark asked.

“Friday morning the squad will be reunited. I know you’re lost without me. But where’s Mary? Why didn’t she come?”

“I gave her a special assignment. But she wished you all the best. Now, if it’s OK with you we’ll be leaving, Sean. We’ve got to call on the guy who shot you.”

“What? He’s here, too?” Paulardis looked surprised. “Mark, I’ve always said you’re too nice to these scums. Just give me the number of his ward and by tomorrow I’ll have told you what his mother’s milk tasted like.”

“Relax, man! We’ll take your advice: we’ll do it the hard way!”

* * * * * * *

They had to wait for almost twenty minutes before they were allowed to see Vinotti. In the meantime two doctors gave him another IV. When they finally let them in, one of the doctors showed them the fingers of his hand.

“We’ve got five minutes,” Mark translated the gesture.

Inside, the bandit, pale-faced, IV needles in both arms, was plugged to all sorts of machines. His condition did not seem to be stable at all.

“Listen, Vinotti,” Mark said kindly, ‘we’ve only got a few minutes. Help us and we’ll help you! I promise you that!”

The patient glanced at them indifferently. “What do you want?”

“Tell us who hired you to kill the senator!”

“I don’t know his name!”

“At least tell us what he looked like,” Arty insisted. “Tall?”

“So-so.”

“Fat, thin?”

“So-so,” Vinotti repeated stubbornly.

“How are we supposed to find a so-so guy?” Mark asked.

“You might as well wait, he might want to give it to your mother,” the bandit advised him grinning.

The man was trying to look tough and defying, which wasn’t the right attitude in a hospital ward, with guards posted outside. Mark felt his blood rush to his cheeks. Losing his patience he grabbed Vinotti by the lapel of his pajamas.

“Listen to me, idiot! Do you think a jerk like Weiss is going to get you out of the shit you’re in? Well, you’re dead wrong! Do you want to spend the rest of your life making license plates? You can’t even imagine how much I can hurt you. I only need to start a rumor about you squeaking and you’re done. I can also write a couple of things on your form: double portion, double walk, three times more packs. The Attica guys will cut your balls and stuff them in your mouth. I can almost see your body lying on the floor with a dead canary on your chest.”

It had been a demonstration of force but it didn’t seem to have the intended effect. The wounded closed his eyes and started groaning. Faintly at first, then louder and louder until a doctor showed up. He looked at the two agents reproachfully then dismissed them.

“Let’s go, Arty. This corpse is already stinking!”

* * * * * * *

They returned to the office to get Mary. Then the three of them went to the Red Star Casino which was owned by Weiss. They had found out that was his headquarters. On the way there, like a hard-working schoolgirl, the woman started pouring out the information on the gangster.

“Rudolph Weiss, also known as ‘Spectacled Fish,’ got rich in the fish trade by swindling several businesses with a ‘shuttle’ system. Then he met Ernest Montevecchi, also known as ‘Green Eyes,’ who had just got the monopoly for the fish trade in New York. They got together and diversified their trade. In fact, Weiss smuggles all kinds of forbidden goods. A year ago FBI Agent Vito Monelli managed to charge Weiss with the smuggling of strategic synthetic materials. The guy defended himself by saying his latest hobby was plasturgism. So an honorable ‘cheerful’ judge and twelve nice old men who would have acquitted even Jack the Ripper were enough to put the feds’ efforts to nothing. And so ‘Spectacled Fish’ was thrown back to swim in the whirlpool of Manhattan crime.”

“Well done, Mary, I see you’ve done your homework,” Mark said.

They entered the casino. It was almost empty at this time of the day. Mark was sorry Sean was not with him. Paulardis would have known how to deal with these gangsters. He had grown up among guys like them, he knew their lingo and their tricks, was just as tough as they were. They crossed the huge room and stopped outside the back door guarded by two “gorillas.” One of them was the big guy in yellow shoes.

“Hi, buddy!” Mark greeted him as if he was an old acquaintance.

“Got a warrant? If not, beat it!”

Mark dug out his gun. “Sure. Can’t you see it? It’s at the end of this barrel!”

The big guy started to shout. Suddenly the door opened and Weiss himself appeared.

“Aaah! The FBI gents,” he looked glad to see them. “Shut up, Pitt! Better groom them and show them in!”

Mark and Arty handed their guns to Pitt, then allowed to be searched. When the guy in the yellow shoes came up to Mary to do the same, Arty turned him around giving him a fierce look.

“Come in!” Rudy Weiss said.

“Do you mind?” Mark asked him.

“Not yet. I suggest we take a fifteen-minute truce,” the gangster said peacefully. The feds agreed.

Weiss’s office was elegantly furnished with expensive mahogany pieces. On the shelves were lots of precious antiques. The only pictures were several enlarged photos showing Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, and other heads of the Jewish underworld.

“Mr. Du Nancy,” the bandit began ceremoniously, “please, accept my apology for the incident at the restaurant yesterday. It had never been my intention to offend your beautiful companion. Unfortunately, my men can be so rude sometimes,” he complained.

“You didn’t mean to offend her,’ Mark replied, “but it seems you wanted to kill her and her uncle.”

“Listen, man!” Weiss looked him in the eyes. “Dorothy Wheller’s my idol. Not even guys like me shoot their idols. As for her uncle, what can I say? I don’t even know the guy. Therefore, I’ve got nothing against him. I know what you’re getting at, though. Vinotti and Garr were, indeed, my men. Only it seems they decided to start a little business on their own. I owe you for killing Garr. As for Vinotti, I’ll make sure he gets into an even cooler room, with a tag on one toe no matter where you take him, guys. Luckily, there was a third guy as well. One who didn’t have the guts to go all the way through. Bring Garner in!” he ordered one of the guards.

Almost instantly a slim tall man was pushed inside. His face was full of bruises.

“Come on, Brad, tell them what you said to me before! Tell us who hired you!”

“A computer engineer. Edward Druller’s the name,” he groaned. “Lives somewhere on Lafayette Avenue. I can take you there. He offered us a hundred thousand bucks to take the two Whellers down.”

“OK, now get lost!” Weiss decided and Garner was helped out of the room. “I guess that about says it all, gentlemen. Now, Du Nancy, I think that makes it up for the incident at the restaurant.”

“All right,” Mark said, preparing to leave.

Before going out, Arty asked Weiss full of curiosity. “Why have I never seen you at Emanuel Temple? You belong there, not here with all these criminals. Besides, how long do you think this friendship between a Jew and an Italian’s going to last?”

The gangster pointed to a portrait on the wall: Lansky’s. “Well, I don’t know, Steimberg, my friend!” Weiss pretended to be at a loss. “That between him and Charlie Luciano lasted for quite a while.”

“Don’t fool yourself, Weiss!” Arty replied with dignity. “I don’t think we could ever be friends.”

The gangster shrugged his shoulders indifferently, then raised a a glass of champagne to them.

“Bona Salude! Have a good time the rest of your lives!”

“The truce is over,” Mark said. “Be careful what you get yourself into, Rudy! More than that, stop harrasing the actress! Now we’re even, but if I ever look you up again, I won’t be leaving my gun at the door, you can be sure of that.”