Bound for the Outer Banks (14 page)

Chapter 15

The next month Ella drew sketches, balled up sketches, and played trash can basketball with sketches until she finally decided she had ten that had made the cut for her prototypes. She really resented her mundane seamstress job when she was being given the opportunity to do much more creative work. Eating was fairly mundane too but it was necessary so she tried not to dwell on her situation.

In the next month she had finished half the samples for the creative team at the Hard Rock headquarters. While she was delivering some altered uniforms to employee services, she was deep in thought as to which design she should tackle next. Passing in front of the Godiva chocolate store, she took the corner without looking up and bumped into a handsome man carrying a duffle bag. One of the bagged uniforms slid off the stack that was haphazardly slung over Ella’s arm. The man bent over and picked it up for her, and gave her a longer than normal look before he said, “Hi, looks like you’ve got your hands full.”

“Yes, my arms actually,” Ella stammered. Damn it, she thought. He wasn’t being literal! Ella took a deep breath. “Yes, you’re right. I’m completely consumed with something other than these utilitarian uniforms.”

The man gave her an inquisitive look.

Damn it! She thought again, this man is not interested in your issues. BeBe had always told Ella to give people a big smile. She said a smile could fix anything. Ella proceeded to grin at the stranger like a Cheshire cat.

“Is something funny?” asked the Chippendale’s worthy specimen of a man.

Screw it, thought Ella. At this point there was nothing to lose. “Nope, I’m just enjoying the eye candy I just bumped into and now I’ll be on my way. Thank you for being a gentleman.” Ella grasped the hook on the hangers so the uniforms would not escape from the stack again, and she stepped around the man.

He turned quickly toward Ella who was walking away and said loudly, “I’m Dante.”

“I’m Ella,” she said, and then pivoted around to head to the employee relations office.

“Ella?” Dante asked.

Ella stopped in her tracks feeling the sweat gather on her arm covered with the plastic garment bags. She looked over her shoulder and replied, “Yes?”

“Would you like to have lunch? I just got into town and I’m starving. It’s just lunch, no big deal.”

Ella smiled. She wanted to blurt out “Yes!!” but her eyes followed the pattern of the giant red and purple dotted paisley rug at her feet. When she thought the appropriate number of seconds had passed to avoid screaming “I’m a lonely desperate woman,” she coyly said, “Sure, but only if it’s dutch.” Ella hated feeling beholden to a man because he bought her a meal. This was her modus operandi on a date, not that there were ever many dates, since she worked at home and eligible, educated, twenty somethings were not exactly in abundance in Biloxi.

“O.K. See you in The Vibe at noon?” asked Dante.

“Sure,” Ella responded casually, although she was somewhat taken aback at the invitation to The Vibe, one of the most expensive dining establishments in Biloxi, and yet another way the casino eventually made most of its money back from the winners.

This was the fateful day that Ella’s relationship with one Dante Vitali began. Dante informed Ella that he had a home in New York and a small apartment in the quarter in New Orleans. He was a financial advisor and had clients in both cities. He’d informed Ella that occasionally he liked to drive over to Biloxi, gamble a little, catch a band, and get a massage at one of the hotel spas. Dante and Ella’s relationship consisted mostly of getting together a few weekends a month and occasionally a midweek visit. He informed Ella that this business was in a crucial growth period and that he had to invest as much time as possible in making his current clients happy and securing new ones.

Ella didn’t care and was happy to see Dante when she could. One of Ella’s designs had been chosen to be the official uniform for the Hard Rock Casino’s cocktail waitresses in all of their locations. Ella had gone to Orlando to consult with Cynthia Ladson personally. Miss Ladson had arranged several trips for Ella to meet with the Hard Rock Corporations supplier in China, finalizing designs, choosing fabrics and trims, and approving the final product. Ella was paid ten thousand dollars for her design, but the real value was including her accomplishment on her resume.

Over the course of a year Ella visited Dante a few times in New Orleans including the four days leading up to Fat Tuesday. On all of the trips to New Orleans with her mother, Ella wondered what it would be like to experience the Mardis Gras parades as one of the lucky few on the wrought iron balconies in the quarter, tossing beads to drunken revelers below. That year with Dante she found out. She laughed at the ridiculous costumes worn by the party goers as well as the parade participants. Her favorite was the group of guys in skeleton costumes with vibrating “boners.”

Once during that year Dante took Ella to New York. It was Christmas. Dante’s family still lived in Italy and he was too busy to return there for the holidays. He knew about Ella losing her parents and her graduating from boarding school and then SCAD, but aside from that he knew very little. Ella still broke down in tears when she talked about her parents so therefore she chose to say as little as possible about them.

One night Dante told Ella he had a surprise for her. When the taxi headed straight for the Brooklyn Bridge Ella felt her chest tighten. She said a little prayer that they were not headed to the River Café, but a few minutes later she saw the courtyard with twinkling light covered trees come in to view. It was the place where she’d shared her last birthday with her parents, the place where she’d received Old Finnegan, and now where she was spending Christmas Eve with the man who’d change her life forever.

Dante visited Ella in Biloxi at least one weekend a month. He liked the simplicity of the small yellow bungalow and informed Ella that a home was the best gift that her parents could have given her and that while waiting to reach the age of thirty in order to obtain her inheritance, she’d achieved more than she ever would have if she’d been handed the money immediately after her parents’ deaths. Dante told Ella that in his family you had to earn everything on your own, but only after you earned their respect and trust were you considered truly successful.

Little did Ella realize that the family Dante was speaking of was not his blood relatives but the Unita Sacra Corona, one of the most notorious Italian criminal organizations. Six months before Ella bumped into Dante, Topton Resorts bought the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino from Elite Entertainment. Topton Resorts was a stooge company financed by the United Sacred Crown, the organization’s translated name. Millions of dollars from union pension plans financed the purchase. Most of the original employees were retained so it was mostly business as usual after the company changed hands, however, more sensitive positions including a few shift managers, the casino manager, and most importantly the staff of the count room were fired and replaced by associates in “The Crown.”

The day Dante met Ella he was covering for Leo Profaci who’d married a sweet Louisiana girl who’d been an exchange student in Brindisi. Leo Profaci had been recruited to be the courier for all the money skimmed in the soft count room of the casino. Uncle Leo, as he was known by The Crown casino employees, would work out at the hotel gym then enter the count room several times a week with his empty gym bag and walk out with around a million dollars. Considering one million dollars in one hundred dollar bills weighed approximately thirty pounds, it was easy to conceal in the gym bag.

Dante Vitali was the liaison between this partnership of the La Cosa Nostra and the Unita Sacra Corona, the two largest mafia organizations. The two had pooled funds to buy the Hard Rock Casinos. Dante Vitali’s mother was Sicilian and he spoke the fast Italian dialect that usually only other Sicilians understood. That was why Crown members called the Sicilians of La Cosa Nostra “zips.” Even the FBI couldn’t find enough willing speakers of the dialect to mount surveillance on members of the clan. Dante’s father was born in Brindisi where he was one of the ruling family members of the Unita Sacra Corona and where The Crown was most active. Besides being born into The Crown family Dante had the added notoriety of being able to speak and understand his mother’s Sicilian Italian and was considered an invaluable asset. The casino partnership was only to be if Dante acted as the go between for the two organizations and ensured that the money was being distributed properly.

The tax free cash that was skimmed in the count rooms was routed by several different means to be laundered and used by the organizations. Uncle Leo and other Crown associates delivered the money to guys on the street. They delivered boxes to hotels, and small packages to banks, all under the watchful eye of Dante Vitali. Money was transferred from its destination in New York accounts to Wall Street brokerage houses to be laundered and then eventually to Swiss accounts. From Switzerland, money was transferred to Bulgaria and Albania to pay transports for shipments of heroin from Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iran. Funds were also used to pay for Turkish cigarettes to sell in New York, a black market gold mine.

Ella, being a naïve person, suspected nothing. She remembered that her father had a financial advisor named Mr. Goldstein, a short, bald Jewish man with little round glasses. He had never failed to bring Ella a lollipop during his visits and he even remembered that pineapple Dum Dums were her favorite. Ella was content to see Dante when she could, considering she had spent the last two years in Biloxi virtually alone.

Dante made a surprise visit that spring and stayed with Ella an entire week. Strangely, he questioned her about her family ties. Before that week he’d never seemed that interested or at least he had avoided the subject since Ella would inevitably begin to cry each time it was brought up. Embarrassingly, Ella admitted to Dante that the executor of her parents’ will, Aunt Madelyn, was the only relative she even knew since her mother had been estranged from her family since she was eighteen. Ella didn’t elaborate, especially since she didn’t exactly want to advertise the fact her mother had been a topless dancer at Atlanta’s Kitty Club to finance her way through college.

After the night of sudden interest in Ella’s family situation, Dante awoke and asked if she would like to go on an extended vacation with him. He informed her that since he was the financial advisor for one of Topton Resorts’ CEOs he would probably be able to pull some strings and get an extended time off granted for Ella.

Ella asked, “How long should I apply for, two weeks?”

Dante replied, “Yes,” although he knew the plan was for the pair to be out of the country much longer than that, possibly even indefinitely. Dante did truly care for Ella, and he decided avoiding the feds was going to be much easier and more tolerable with a woman to accompany him. A couple traveling together seemed much less suspicious than a single man, and the FBI more than likely assumed he would be on the run alone.

The Bureau had busted some low ranking Crown associates that had ratted and led the agents up the ranks to Dante and some other principal characters in the organization. Usually these high ranking members were immune to prosecution since other players in the organization did all the dirty work, however, under the Federal RICO Statute (The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) leaders of crime syndicates could be tried for crimes they ordered others to carry out. Dante desperately needed to make himself scarce for a while.

Ella applied for her extended leave through the human resources department at the Hard Rock Hotel, and three days later, when she was told her vacation had been approved, she was floored. She’d had to practically offer up her future first born to get the days off to attend Mardis Gras with Dante and agree to work four straight twelve hour days to clear the backlog of alterations in order to go to New York for a long weekend at Christmas, all of this in spite of the fact she had twenty five days of accrued leave on the books.