West 47th (47 page)

Mitch gazed down the wide Hudson. Like many major rivers, especially in summer, its placid appearance belied its swiftness and currents. The water he was now looking at would be flowing past Manhattan, including West 47th, in practically no time.

Chapter 36

It was the second day that Mitch and Maddie had been back in the city. Four o'clock in the afternoon.

Since early yesterday Mitch had been putting off going to see Visconti and, now, standing on the corner of West 47th outside 580 Fifth he was still procrastinating.

It seemed to Mitch that Visconti was the final person he'd have to contend with regarding this Iranian emerald matter. He'd expressed to Maddie that it was about seventy-five percent his opinion that he shouldn't wait for Visconti to make a move but face up to him with the truth and hope he believed it. Visconti was new mob, Visconti was not as irrational as Riccio had been, Visconti had enough understanding of the abstract to accept unapparent circumstances. Thus were the sort of persuasions Mitch had been offering his judgment. His better judgment insisted on having its say, to remind him that new-mob Visconti and his type of have-arounds were far more efficiently lethal.

Maddie convinced Mitch's other twenty-five percent that it would be best if he took the initiative. Besides, she said, she had important things to tend to in town. Her birds were, no doubt, in need of fresh water and would stop loving her unless she provided some soon, and Casimiro Ramírez was scheduled for a lesson.

Casimiro Ramírez was a ringing name Mitch would have remembered had he heard it.

“He's an eight-year-old who wants to be a great jazz guitarist,” Maddie had told him.

“Another prodigy.”

“He plays like he has webbed fingers. If anything he should take up cymbals.”

“So why the lesson?”

“That'll
be
the lesson,” she'd said.

So, now, while she was high up in the Sherry gently dashing the dreams of Casimiro Ramírez, there was Mitch doing some last-ditch vacillating. He thought he was thirsty enough to have an iced tea somewhere; he thought he'd go to Barnes & Noble and see what new books on tape they had in for Maddie; he thought he'd stroll down five blocks, like it was some other day, and sit on the New York Public Library steps.

Not because he was intimidated to the point of weak-knee by Visconti. He'd just undergone such an ordeal with Riccio that he felt, in all fairness, life ought to give him a breather. When had any straight good guy such as himself had to go up against two crooked bad guys so consecutively?

Not fair but fuck it, he decided.

He entered the 580 building and went up to Visconti's offices. In the tastefully done reception were the same pair of youthful have-arounds as the time before. Dressed to kill in Calvin and looking as though they swam two hundred butterfly laps every day before breakfast and did Shorin-Ryn Karate during lunch breaks.

They remembered Mitch by name. It was like he was expected. His arrival was phoned in and without wait he was shown down the narrow interior hall to Visconti's private office.

Visconti was in shirtsleeves seated at his desk. On the phone. He raised his chin abruptly as though throwing his smile to Mitch. He placed his hand over the mouthpiece. “Be right with you,” he said and continued with his phone conversation.

Mitch couldn't help but overhear some of it. Large sums of money being stipulated and, cryptically, a hundred pieces of white, two hundred of blue, which Mitch knew meant diamonds and sapphires.

The phone call in progress gave Mitch time to fit into the situation with more ease. Most of his misgivings were being chased. Coming there had definitely been the right decision.

The phone call also allowed him to appraise this day's Visconti: lively blue custom-tailored shirt with long closely separated collar points and monogrammed cuff, dyed blue ostrich skin suspenders, Hèrmes two-hundred-dollar silk tie. No casual shirt and canvas tennis shoes this day. For some special reason, Mitch presumed.

Finally, Visconti hung up, stood up and came from around his desk for a handshake. A firm grip with his right, four pumps instead of the usual two, while his left clasped Mitch's upper arm. “I was getting concerned about you Mitch.”

“No reason to be.”

“For days now whenever I happened to look across your office was dark.”

“I've been out of town.”

“I thought as much.” Visconti squinted, examined. “Hey,” he frowned, “that's a nasty scratch.” Referring to the perforated-looking scratch that ran from the outer corner of Mitch's left eye to below his earlobe. He also had numerous scratches on the back of his hands. Those on him elsewhere were concealed. “Where did you get that?” Visconti asked.

Mitch evaded the inquiry with admiration for Visconti's necktie.

Visconti let him evade and for a moment Mitch thought he was about to take off the tie and give it to him. Be a shame to undo the perfect, tiny knot.

As before they sat in the visitors' chairs.

“How's your uncle-in-law?” Visconti asked.

“Better,” Mitch replied, and because Wally came to mind, added: “greatly improved.”

“And Maddie?”

“She's fine.”

“I bought a town house,” Visconti said.

“Where?”

“In the seventies. East, of course. Actually, I bought it about eight months ago and had it renovated to suit. Practically gutted the place.”

Mitch thought of Ruder.

“This coming Saturday I'm having people in for the first time. Not a large crowd. Just a few special people like yourself. You'll recognize some of the faces. And some of the figures too.” Visconti did a slightly salacious smirk. “Movie people.”

“This Saturday.”

“Hope you can make it.”

“Depends on Maddie.”

“She'll want to come. Anyway, come solo if it gets to that. I'm sure Maddie doesn't keep you on too short a leash.”

She doesn't
keep me
at all was what Mitch wanted to say. He was becoming increasingly resentful of Maddie being called Maddie by Visconti, who had never met her, and never would if Mitch had his way. How, under the circumstances, could he turn Visconti down on this Saturday night thing?

“Along with my new town house I have a new lady friend,” Visconti said. “I want to impress her with you and Maddie. She thinks my only close acquaintances are emaciated models and way overweight gem dealers. How about a drink?”

Mitch nearly automatically declined but decided he could use one. “Any scotch,” he said, “straight or on the rocks, doesn't matter.”

Visconti ordered the drinks through the intercom on his desk and returned to his chair. “I'm planning on showing a film Saturday night,” he said, “one that hasn't yet been released. Not coincidentally I have a sizeable chunk invested in it.” Visconti named a couple of stars who were the leads. “Film-making must be in my blood, the way I'm drawn to it.” He directed a glance intended to direct Mitch's attention to the Luchino Visconti poster on the wall to the left.

Mitch pretended to be unaware that was expected of him.

Which irked Visconti but only slightly and he was able to smooth it over. “Something you ought to get into, financing films,” he said. “That it's such high-risk is only greedy bullshit spread by those making plenty from doing it. Perhaps you and I could do a film venture together. I'd enjoy that. Wouldn't you?”

Mitch did a very small smile and a single, almost imperceptible nod, meanwhile thinking Visconti's surmise that he was so financially well off came from the impression that he could dip into the Strawbridge money pot anytime for any amount. Or else …

He got Visconti eyes to eyes and got to the point. “I don't have those Iranian emeralds.”

“Of course you do.”

“No.”

“Perhaps what you mean is you no longer have them.”

“I've never had them.”

“You either still have them or you've already cashed them in.”

“Neither.”

Visconti didn't appear upset; however Mitch couldn't trust that.

“You made a nice score. Why deny it?”

Visconti will turn any moment, Mitch predicted.

“Is it because you think it's so fucking important to me, that I'll press you for a piece of your score, or even all of it?”

Don't say, Mitch thought.

“You insult me, Mitch. That was Riccio, not me.”

Mitch noted the past tense.

“Think I got no feelings, I don't mean sympathy, I mean feelings, for what a guy with such a rich wife has to put up with, the constant stretch it is for him to keep his
cogliones?
”

When Mitch didn't comment, Visconti did a little conceding shrug and went on. “Sure, twenty-five extra large isn't chicken fat by anybody's count, and if this particular twenty-five had come my way I would have gladly stuffed it away down in the Caymans or put it out to the street. But the way it went down it didn't come to me, it found you, and I'm not going to begrudge you a dime of it.
Capish?
”

Mitch didn't
capish
. There had to be a catch. Say yeah, he told himself. “Yeah.”

“That didn't sound like thanks,” Visconti said coolly.

A thanks won't kill you, Mitch thought. “Thanks.”

Visconti warmed up as instantly as he'd cooled. “Anyway, it's not entirely magnanimity on my part. I owe you.”

“For what?”

“For clipping Riccio, what else?”

How it was that Visconti knew of Riccio's death was only momentarily a question, for just then the answer entered carrying the drinks on a silver tray. Mitch recognized him right off, despite his changed appearance, the immaculate white serving jacket, fresh white shirt and neatly executed black bow tie; despite the polished, mannerly way he acquitted himself as he underlaid the drinks with coasters before placing them just so on the marble-topped table and arranged appropriate, small linen napkins folded just so and, before making his exit, inquired just so with a
sir
if anything more was wanted.

Caselli.

Riccio's oversize, old-mob sort of have-around, the one who according to what Fat Angelo related to Mitch, had not gone along on the Kinderhook move ostensibly because he had the shits and pukes. Caselli wasn't Riccio's have-around but Visconti's on the inside. He knew when the move was made and how it turned out.

As though drinking to that, Visconti gestured with his glass. It was superb scotch. The best Mitch had ever tasted. It went down his throat like molten gold. His belly was a crucible.

“We all know what Riccio was,” Visconti said, “a crude, outdated psychopath.”

As opposed to a slick, contemporary one, Mitch thought.

“Not only me but the whole street owes you for doing him.”

What would be Visconti's reaction, Mitch wondered, if he told him that actually his blind wife had done Riccio. “You could have taken Riccio out whenever you wanted,” Mitch said.

“So it might seem to a civilian such as yourself. Sure, Riccio could have suffered what would appear to be a fatal accident. That was always in the back of my mind and frequently in the front. I could have arranged it.”

“Why didn't you?”

“Such things have a way of getting fucked up. No matter how far I was removed from it I'd ultimately have to answer and then it would get complicated.”

“Like how?”

“The guy who did it for me would have to be done, then the guy who did the guy who did it would have to be done. A lot of words get piled up inside people and eventually come spilling out.”

A percipient shrug by Mitch.

“A hooked-up guy like Riccio never gets clipped without permission,” Visconti recited as though he'd memorized it from a rule book. He paragraphically downed a gulp of scotch and, when the afterscringe of his face subsided, went on:

“Consider,” he said, “how much it pissed me to have to share the street with that thieving piece of shit, the humiliation of having to sit here and accept that he was entitled to half.”

Mitch did some empathy. Behind it he wondered if there would be any payback forthcoming for his having been responsible for Riccio's death. He asked Visconti.

“No,” Visconti assured, “you've got no worries. The people Riccio was answering to know what went down. The way they see it he got whacked in the line of duty. Matter of fact, I'll be with them later today. They're going to take down the no-trespassing sign, if you know what I mean.”

Mitch understood. Those people who got answered to were going to decree that all of West 47 from Fifth Avenue to Avenue of the Americas, as well as the spillovers that comprised the district, would henceforth be the franchise of Visconti. His alone.

“The sit will be only a little sit, a formality,” Visconti said. “Already some of my crew are over at Riccio's place with an industrial vacuum. What's your guess how much goods they suck up out of Riccio's wall-to-wall shag carpet?”

“Maybe a million worth.”

“I say five, at least five. According to Caselli, who witnessed a great many drops and scatters, there's even a first-quality six-carat Burma ruby lost somewhere in that jungle.” Visconti chuckled, shook his head. “What an asshole Riccio was. Be a pleasure to forget him.”

“Yeah.”

“Understand now why I owe you? Why I'm not going to press you for even a cut of that Iranian twenty-five extra large?”

Mitch's pager beeped. Maddie wanted to be called.

“Use my phone,” Visconti offered.

Mitch went to Visconti's desk and dialed home. Maddie picked up on the first ring. She sounded hurried.

“Where are you?” she asked.

Mitch told her.

“How's it going?”

“Okay.”

“We're not to have another gang war?”

“Evidently.”