Blood Money (16 page)

“How about veal with pepperoni and Marsala.” He could feel his heart pounding. “We’ll eat, drink wine, and make love.”

“All night?”

“All night—and no fighting. Promise?”

“No fighting,” she said. “
Ti amo
.
”

He wanted to respond, but he hesitated a second. Before he could say “I love you, too,” she said,
“Ciao,”
and hung up.

Levin punched the button under the edge of the conference table, silencing the bug on the phone in Joe Maglio’s old office.

“Comes in handy, doesn’t it? Aren’t you glad I talked you into putting it in?”

“Yeah, I guess. But I really liked that girl. She had class.” Silvio shook his head. “It’s a fucking shame.” He pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket and dialed. He waited for the familiar voice to answer.

“What can I do for you today, Mr. Silvio?”

“I have another job for you.”

It had been raining since six p.m. It was now ten o’clock at night, and the fog was dense. The air had warmed up to fifty degrees, a record for January thirtieth. He gnawed viciously on the steak and onion sandwich he had just purchased at Pat’s Steaks. He blended in with the other inner city cab drivers talking with full mouths, standing outside Pat’s eating steak sandwiches. The peppers he had plastered on the meat were hotter than he had expected. He choked and spit out a mouthful and disgustedly threw the rest of the still-wrapped sandwich into the trash barrel outside the corner establishment. The other drivers laughed. One of them pulled the uneaten portion from the barrel and gave it to the homeless man who hung out around the weirdly V-shaped outdoor diner.

Rudi jumped back into his cab and headed toward I-95. His headlights flooded the murkiness, but all he could really see was the steam rising from the road surface just in front of him. He cursed the lack of visibility. Arriving at Philadelphia International Airport at 10:20, he pulled into the cab stand at the Overseas terminal to wait for his passenger. He had checked with El Al and was told that flight 1005 was due to arrive on schedule. He had ten minutes to get rid of the cabs ahead of him and the ground transportation dispatcher. They would fuck up his plans if allowed to remain. He went directly into the airport and up the nearest escalator. Two minutes later he emerged, waving his arms, cursing, shouting that all international flights had been canceled until tomorrow morning due to the weather. The other drivers began leaving one by one for greener fields.

Rudi turned to the dispatcher, who had motioned him to move his cab. Speaking with a heavy Middle Eastern accent, “I need to stay, mister. I got to pick up a worker who’s sick, she works upstairs. She’s my sister…”

The dispatcher shook his head no, but Rudi immediately laid a twenty dollar bill on top of his desk. “Please, she’s my sister and she’s pregnant.”

The dispatcher took the twenty and without a word strolled into the airport.

Rudi smiled, always amazed at his talent, as he reentered the cab. He checked his disguise in the rear view mirror. He looked the part—Middle Eastern, aquiline nose, dark complexion—dressed in neatly pressed khakis, jean jacket, and aviator glasses. He smiled approvingly. No Hollywood director or makeup artist could have done a better job. He thought of how he loved the challenge and artistry in his job. If he didn’t like the real thing so much, he could have been an actor, and a good one at that. But he loved real death and real blood. He checked his watch. He had less than five minutes. He pulled his cab to the other side of the road, away from the sidewalk in front of the glass exit doors, and backed as far away as possible, still keeping a clear view through the lighted doors into the terminal. The lighting was yellow and eerie. It made his heart race. He was excited. He turned his headlights off so as not to attract the wrong passenger.

A man emerged from the yellow light, carrying a briefcase and pulling a black carryon. He spotted the cab through the fog and started toward it. Rudi leaned out of the open window and waved him away, but the man continued walking toward him. Rudi shook his head no and rolled up the window. But the would-be passenger began knocking on the closed window until he saw the driver slowly reach into his inside jacket pocket. Wisely, the man turned toward the safety of the terminal, where he could call another cab.

Rudi strained to see through the drifting fog and caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure of a woman with long hair, young, lean. She walked assertively through the glass doors. As she came closer, her image became clearer—it was her. He quickly compared her with the photo Silvio had sent by messenger. He readied himself, thanking his mother for telling him that he could be anything he wanted—this time a
Middle Eastern cab driver with a three hundred thousand dollar fare—not bad for one night’s work.

She saw the deserted cab stand. “
Merde
,” she said.

Rudi turned on his taxi sign and flashed his headlights at her, and then waited. She waved at the cab, signaling him to come over to her as she slung her large, black tote bag over her shoulder. The cab didn’t move.

“Taxi!” she yelled, “Taxi.” she waved.

He flashed his headlights again, but didn’t move.

“Taxi!” She stepped off the curb into the road. He switched his headlights to bright and started to move toward her. The lights blinded her as they came closer. She shielded her eyes with her free hand. She yelled at the faceless driver, “
Bruto!
” The engine revved loudly over the sound of her voice. Suddenly the blinding lights were on top of her. She had no time to escape, to scream. It was too late.

The thud of the cab striking her was music to Rudi’s ears. The sight of her body catapulting over the hood of the cab was magnificent—a grand maneuver. No stunt man or woman could possibly fake this, he thought. This was the real thing. Maria smashed into the chain link fence on the other side of the road. It clanged loudly, and then bowed as her body slid to the ground.

Rudi pounded the steering wheel with clenched fists. “Yes, yes!” He quickly opened the door of the cab, leaped out, and ran to the crumpled, bleeding figure. He snatched the black tote bag and tossed it into his cab, humming Ravel’s
Bolero
as he sped off into the fog toward I-95. He wished that he could have videotaped it—her face, beautifully wide-eyed and unsuspecting, like a deer caught in his headlights. And then—poof! like magic, she was gone. God, he loved his job!

Nick nervously paced back and forth in his living room, watching the hands of the antique case clock. It had chimed eleven o’clock twenty minutes ago. He was worried. And he was pissed off at himself for not insisting on picking Maria up at the airport. He poured a glass of Chianti from a newly opened bottle of
Badia a Coltibuono
and took a swallow. He listened to the ticking of the old clock in the otherwise silent apartment.

Floured medallions of veal lay on a plate next to a sauté pan. Marsala sauce waited in a bowl next to the veal.

He had an apology speech ready. He had practiced it a dozen times. The glass dining table was set, the candles were lit, and the roses he had bought were already starting to wilt. Where
was
she, he asked himself. The plane had landed on time. He had already checked with the airport. Could there have been a car accident on the way to his apartment? He could barely make out the Benjamin Franklin bridge through the fog bank outside his penthouse window. He didn’t like fog; it made him feel claustrophobic. It was like a heavy drape pulled across his mirror of the world. He fought the feeling. Then came another demon. The image of Madeline’s dying body against the backdrop of all the machines that couldn’t keep her alive. When the cancer had had its way with his mother, they had called him in to see her. He never forgot it, her shriveled body unresponsive to his pleas and his cries. He was ten years old then, and she was the only person on whom he could rely. His alcoholic father was useless. He beat them and stole their money for booze until one day Nick hit him with a baseball bat and sent him to the hospital with a skull fracture. The bastard didn’t attend Madeline’s funeral, and Nick didn’t attend
his
when he was burned alive in a house fire on skid row.

Nick was still a kid, but he had gotten a reputation as a tough guy after putting his father in the hospital. The story had reached the ears of Vince DiCicco, head of the Philadelphia mob. Nick was alone and needed a family, and DiCicco needed a trustworthy bag boy to run cash between card games. Later, he was promoted to chauffeur and almost got himself killed a few times by a stray bullet. He would have been a dead man, or in jail, if it hadn’t been for Joe Maglio.

The phone rang, jolting him out of his reverie.

“Hello”

“Mr. Ceratto?” asked a familiar sounding voice. “This is Detective Kirby. Remember me?”

“Yes, Detective.”

“Sorry for the call this late. But I’m afraid I have bad news for you.” Kirby was direct and brief. He extended his sympathies but did not stay on the line. He had work to do.

When the line went dead, Nick looked at the receiver in disbelief. Then he pulled the phone out of the jack and threw it against the window with all his strength, shattering the doublepaned glass.

“A hit and run,” Kirby said on the telephone. The ash from his most recent cigarette dropped onto his burnt, scarred desk. “That’s all we’ve got right now, Captain. She had just come in on an El Al flight from Tel Aviv. Yeah. She just got off the plane. No luggage. Nothing checked on the plane. And no purse. Could have been stolen. She had her passport in her pocket. That’s how we IDed her…Italian…yeah…I called her boyfriend, Nick Ceratto. I know him. I had met her at his apartment. Just a coincidence, I guess…Yeah, Nick Ceratto, from the same firm. They should be in the funeral business.” Kirby chuckled slyly, drawing deeply. More ash fell into his lap. He ignored it.

“Some guy coming in on the same flight heard about it on the news and called the department…yeah…He’d seen a taxi across the road waiting in the dark that wouldn’t pick him up. The driver reached in his coat pocket for something when the guy banged on the window, so he split. We were already out to talk to him. We got nothing—no make, no model, no license tag, not even the cab company. The dispatcher left because of the fog. He thought all flights had been canceled. Was seen at the airport bar. Real idiot, right? We’re following up with that…I’ll keep you posted, Captain.” Kirby nodded his gray head, wondering where he got all the patience. “I’ll get a report out right away, Cap. She has to be formally identified. Then the body can go straight to he medical examiner for an autopsy. But we’ll have the report in a few hours… Yeah, the boyfriend, Ceratto’s going to do it. I feel sorry for him. She’s a mess. Car musta been flying when it slammed into her… Yeah, we’re checking him out, too…no stone unturned, Captain. I’m meeting him at the morgue right now…Yeah, bye.”

Kirby slowly raised himself from his desk chair. His arthritic knees protested the change in position. He buttoned his frayed
shirt collar and pulled up his only tie.
More bodies
, he thought as he reached for his ancient coat. He put it on slowly, grimacing with the creaking of his aching bones.

Nick had been waiting for half an hour at 321 University Avenue, the medical examiner’s headquarters. He sat alone on the scruffy steel and vinyl bench. He had been told that he had to wait for Detective Kirby before he would be permitted to see her. Nick was fuming inside. He got up and paced, hands in pockets. He turned on the male receptionist at the desk.

“Jesus Christ! I’ve been here a fucking half hour. I want to see her now!” he yelled, pointing a finger in the pale face of the man sitting at a scratched piece of metal furniture that vaguely resembled a desk.

“Sir, I have my orders. You’ll have to wait. I’m sorry.” The man went back to reading
The Daily News
and munching a Baby Ruth.

“I don’t care if I have to pull every corpse out of every fucking drawer—I’ll find her.” Nick started to walk past the receptionist. Just then the heavy metal door opened with a loud bang.

“Mr. Ceratto,” Kirby rushed in, breathless. “I’m so sorry you had to wait…”

“Yeah, I’m sure you are.” Nick stood his ground menacingly as Kirby approached. The detective nodded at the receptionist and the young man pressed the buzzer, opening the automatic door into the morgue.

It was quiet and it was cold. The place had the stale smell of death. Nick knew it well. It was the arrested decomposition of human flesh without the masking smell of flowers.

They approached the viewing room and stood on one side of the glass wall.

“I want to warn you. She’s a mess,” Kirby said apologetically, hands tucked deeply into his pockets.

Nick remained silent, his heart pounding. He wanted to turn and run. He wanted to pretend that whatever was lying in there
wasn’t her. But he stayed, staring at the darkened glass. “Let’s do it.”

Kirby gave a signal and the lights were turned on. An attendant wearing a blue uniform and latex gloves wheeled a gurney up to the glass partition. He peeled back a black plastic sheet, uncovering Maria Elena to the collarbone.