Killing The Rat (An Organized Crime Thriller) (7 page)

The girl he’d just scared to death. The truth was, he had really loved her and she’d broken his heart. He didn’t want to kill her because deep down, and he had been so ashamed of this, he held out some small hope that she would come back to him.

She never did.

The second one was pretty with a killer body, but she had a nasty temper. At first, Tommy had honestly thought that her outbursts were kind of cute. A sign of real passion. And the way she got so mad about the little things like forgetting to take the trash out and leaving his clothes lying around her bedroom floor. It had been kind of cute. Real, what do you call it, domestic?

But as the relationship progressed, it started to wear on Tommy and after the first two days of wedding planning, he’d called it off. The fact was, there was nothing cute and nothing “domestic” about it. She was just a total 100% bitch.

Tommy had cursed his luck. First a whore, then a psychotic bitch.

Looking for a happy medium, Tommy had turned to the Internet. In his small colonial in Grosse Pointe, Tommy had turned the small sunroom into the computer room. He had heard of the amount of sex on the Internet, but was truly impressed. People were hooking up everywhere.

His favorite site became a place called thestonebone.com. It was a singles place and Tommy had seemingly stumbled into a bunch of young girls looking for an older man. One of them, who called herself “Mygirl329” had aggressively pursued Tommy. She told him she was fifteen, but had the body of an eighteen year old. She’d said the nastiest things to Tommy with such alacrity that he found it hard to believe she was only fifteen.

But he decided to find out.

“Mygirl329” lived in Lansing but had moved from Detroit just a few years back. She had been in the eighth grade when the family made the move- a fact in which Tommy took great relish. She said she came back with friends once in awhile. They scheduled a meeting on one of those weekends.

Tommy decided to meet her at a small pub in St. Claire Shores where he could be sure no one would know him. It was called the Lighthouse.

They were to meet on a Saturday night. If he managed to get “Mygirl329” back to his place, he wanted to take his time with her. He showered, dressed, put on cologne, and filled his wallet with fresh one hundred dollar bills. He was going to impress “Mygirl329” so much that she wouldn’t stand a chance. A young girl like this would be putty in his hands. Literally.

He rolled up to the pub in his freshly washed Beemer. He entered the Lighthouse and waited, sipped a beer and studied the hopelessly cheesy nautical décor.

When Mygirl329 showed up, she looked a lot older than she’d described. Rather than fifteen, Tommy guessed she was probably around thirty.

She looked a lot bigger, too. Over the Internet, she’d said she was 5’5” and about a hundred pounds. But the girl who slid into the booth was more like 6’ and at least 150.

And Tommy also could have sworn that Mygirl329 had said she had black hair, not red and that her eyes were brown, not flaming green.

Tommy was about to tell this woman that she had made a mistake, that he was meeting someone else here.

“No, you’re not,” Mygirl329 said.

She pulled out a card and slid it across the heavily lacquered table top. It said Amanda Rierdon, FBI. Tommy noted the address of Detroit FBI headquarters.

329 Gratiot Avenue.

Real cute.

Amanda Rierdon then proceeded to tell Tommy that they had copies of all the transcripts between himself and Mygirl329 and that Tommy had committed a felony by trying to arrange sex with an underage girl.

She had then told him that he would be going to prison for a long time unless he wore a wire around Vincenzo Romano. Still shocked that there was no “Mygirl329” and that this giant she-devil had tricked him. He crumpled instantly. It was no contest, anyway. He couldn’t do prison.

Tommy cursed his luck.

And then he cursed the Internet.

No one was who they claimed to be.

***

Now, back at the Prescott Hotel, Tommy sipped from the cognac and smoked his cigar. It was like that Grateful Dead song: what a long strange trip it’s been. Amen, brother.

Tommy took an especially long pull from the cognac. He was getting drunk, but not so much that he wouldn’t be able to perform. He was feeling good.

He had them all beat. That was what in some ways felt like a miracle to him. The FBI had busted him, all those agents all working so hard. Romano and all his power, all his minions. They’d all had their plans for Tommy Abrocci.

But he’d outsmarted them all.

He counted the money in the suitcase. One million two hundred forty thousand dollars. Tax free. Chump change to Romano. A new, better life than the FBI could have provided. Sure, he’d turn himself into the FBI and testify and take down Romano. But the money would remain his little secret. He knew how the witness protection program worked. A new city, new identity. But only so much cash.

His way was better.

He’d live off the FBI’s paycheck, and then use the 1.24 million as his fun money.

Life was going to be great, he thought.

All he needed now?

A young blonde hooker.

15.

Amanda Rierdon found Tommy Abrocci with the tried-and-true method so many amateur fugitives fell prey to: traceable credit cards. All of the credit cards held by Tommy Abrocci had been flagged by the Bureau’s computer system. Even the ones Abrocci thought the FBI knew nothing about. But the fact was, he’d used a stolen card on one of his Internet forays and Amanda’s team had traced the one card to a group that was stolen from a missing businessman. So Tommy had been smart enough to book the hotel on a stolen credit card that had never been used since its acquisition, but it hadn’t mattered.

The system used by FBI for tracing stolen cards was similar to the systems used by the credit card companies themselves. If a card was reported stolen, the minute it was used, authorities were contacted and told exactly when and where and for how much the card had been swiped. It was a simple process, really. And seemingly obvious, but many felons found that out the hard way.

Rierdon was at her desk, poring over transcripts of her interviews with Abrocci when the call came in. She was angry, tired and frustrated. The notes hadn’t given her any ideas she didn’t already have. And it all reminded her what an absolutely shit of a human being went by the name of Tommy Abrocci.

She was, however, slightly surprised by the turn-of-events. She had figured Abrocci, although clearly a stupid asshole, was at least smarter than this. If he had truly wanted to get away from the FBI, to disappear, the first thing he should have tried to do was to get a fake i.d. and then new credit cards under those false identities. The FBI would have no record of those cards. Unless, of course, they already knew about the identity.

Amanda got over her surprise quickly enough, and found the humor in the situation. Tommy fucking Abrocci, fugitive from the FBI, running from one of the most feared Mob bosses in the country, just ambles into a hotel in Ann Arbor—the Prescott no less—Amanda saw on the printout she’d been handed, and starts running a tab. She chuckled at the idea. It was one of the best parts of her job. Wiping the smug expressions off of criminal’s faces. She imagined Tommy was wearing a shit-eating grin a mile wide right now. God, it was going to be fun and satisfying to throw his fat ass into the can.

No wonder the prison system was packed to the gills. Most of these guys were incredibly stupid.

Amanda realized she had to get a noose around Abrocci fast. Even though it looked like he was settling in for the night at the Prescott, she wasn’t about to take any chances. It was time to slap this Italian sausage on the fryer.

She was just picking up the phone when Vawter walked in. In his hand was a matching copy of the printout on her desk. She groaned inwardly. Here it comes.

“Fortuitous,” he said.

“Let’s hope so,” she said.

“It’d be a great way to ring in your promotion- bring down Vincenzo Romano, the elder statesman of the Detroit mafia.” His grin was one hundred percent synthetic, as unnatural as a tattoo.

“Something I can help you with, sir?” Rierdon asked, her best efforts to keep the sarcasm from her voice falling well short of their mark.

“You lost Abrocci once, don’t lose him again.”

“Care to detail how exactly I lost him the first time? He bolted, but not while under surveillance.”

“Why not?’

“Sir?”

“Why wasn’t he under surveillance?”

“Put surveillance on a snitch? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?”

“It’s been done before.”

“Purposely?” The sarcasm was out in full force now. She couldn’t help it. This guy was left over from the old boy system of the sixties and seventies. Like grout on bathroom tile that just couldn’t be removed no matter how much they scrubbed the public image of the Bureau. You just have to rip the tile out at this point.

“Why didn’t you bring him in sooner?” he asked.

“We were about to.”

“But...?” he said.

“But nothing. He was wrapping things up. He had the final set of tapes he’d made and was ready to turn them over. We were supposed to meet and he never showed. The Romano compound looked like a wasp’s nest tipped upside down.”

Vawter shook his head. “What’d he do?”

“No way of knowing until we bring him in.”

Vawter nodded. “Good luck, Amanda,” he said. “A lot’s riding on this.”

“I’ll try to remember that, sir,” she said, but he had already slammed the door shut.

“Screw you, too,” she said.

16.

She drove the Buick because she couldn’t stand the way the others drove. Amanda was a fast, aggressive driver, ignoring the first rule of driver’s safety: never let your emotions affect your driving.

In the front passenger seat was Rupert, who continually leaned his head back as Amanda yelled at traffic on his side of the car, as they usually sped by. Her hot breath licked his face as she screamed obscenities out the window.

Macaleer and Daniels sat in the back seat, quiet as church mice.

“My grandmother died ten years ago,” Amanda said. “The day of the funeral, on the way to the cemetery, we drove about five miles an hour. At the time I thought it was wonderfully appropriate seeing as how that’s how fast Grandma Dorothy drove when she was alive.”

The three junior agents were intently studying traffic. Trying not to bring the brunt of Rierdon’s anger upon them. “I just don’t get it,” she said. “How stupid do you have to be to still not understand the difference between the slow lane and the fast lane? How many stand-up comedians have worn out that whole line of comedy? For years! Jesus Christ!

Vincenzo Romano is getting away with God knows what while I’m sitting out here on I-275 with a bunch of motherfucking assholes who shouldn’t even be allowed to get behind the wheel. They’re not qualified to drive the fucking zamboni at a Red Wings game.”

Amanda Rierdon looked at the line of cars in front of her. They represented a very small portion of the obstacles that were placed before her every day. It was just like the Bureau. You had the incompetent and the written-offs in the slow lane, mixed in with the young and inexperienced. In the center lane, you had the up-and-comers who still had a ways to go, and you had the has-beens who were on their way down.

And then you had the fast lane. Where the superstars traveled, disobeying ordinary rules and regulations, comrades on the way to the top.

Amanda’s lane.

“How did we track him down?” Rupert asked. He asked tentatively. Amanda hated reticence in a man. It was so weak.

“Excuse me,” Amanda said. “Did you say ‘we’?”

Rupert’s retort was to turn and look out the window.

A car cut in front of them. Amanda blasted the horn then swerved around him and blasted the horn again.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” Amanda said, putting her hand back on the steering wheel. “He’s at the Prescott, as you all know. Some uniforms are meeting us there, strictly as backup. You’ve all had a chance to go over the logistics, the layout of the rooms and hallways. We go in hard, we go in fast. Macaleer, I want you covering the back. Daniels, you watch the front. Rupert and I will take him in his room.”

Suddenly, she slammed on the brakes, nearly rear-ending the car in front of them.

Amanda looked at the digital clock on the dashboard, then at Macaleer. “That is, if we can get to Ann Arbor before Abrocci retires to goddamn Florida.”

17.

Vincenzo Romano stood stark naked in the middle of his bathroom. The bright light made his skin look even more gray and unhealthy. He looked at himself in the mirror. He’d seen plenty of dead guys in his lifetime, and right now, he felt like he was seeing another one.

He looked down. His thick, gnarled feet stood in stark contrast to the white marble tile. His toes were gray, the hair thick and black. He could barely see them because his gut stuck out and blocked his view. His entire body was round and curvy, thick with fat and lasagna, pesto and wine, biscotti and espresso. Romano looked back up at the mirror. He had never felt so fat, so old, so ugly.

He tore his eyes away from his own body and looked around the room. It was a huge master bath with a whirlpool, two pedestal sinks and a toilet with a bidet. The walls were wallpapered with a Renaissance theme.

Right now, the wallpaper, the tile, the beveled glass mirror, none of it pleased him, like it sometimes did. He raised his large, heavy featured face to the mirror. A tear pooled at the corner of one eye. A thin drop of nasal mucus appeared at the entrance to his left nostril, like a groundhog tentatively peeking his head out on February 2nd.

Romano looked at his upper chest in the mirror. The thick white bandage was still around his butchered torso, but he would have to remove it in order to wash himself. Alone, his head dizzy with grief, he wished he could be anywhere else, wish he could wake up on a desert island and have his old body back. He’d never really been all that lean, always thick and always solid. But in his twenties, it was mostly muscle. Now, the muscle had turned to fat. He wished he could go have that body again, fly to some island in the Caribbean, swim in the saltwater and sit shirtless in the sun for a few hours.