Blood Money Read online

  “Please help me find my cousin’s killer,” Maria said putting her hand on Nick’s chest. She turned her head away, trying to hide her face as silent sobs shook her.

  Nick tenderly took hold of her shoulders, drawing her near. He lifted her chin and then looked deeply into her wet, golden eyes. “I want to help you,” he said. “But how?”

  Maria wiped her cheeks, tossing her cigarette to the ground. The embers burned briefly on the damp cobblestones and then fizzled out.

  “I’ll tell you inside,” she said. She took Nick’s hand and led him up a back staircase to a second floor entrance to the apartment. The room was large and high ceilinged—painted the lightest shade of blue. It was sparely furnished with only two silk brocade couches and an ancient monk’s table in the center. Over it hung a huge, wrought-iron chandelier. Maria lit the wick in a longhandled candle lighter and touched the wick of each candle in the chandelier, lighting them all until the room glowed.

  She put her arms around his neck and rubbed her damp face against his stubbled chin. “I’ve been wanting to do this since I saw you.”

  Nick closed his eyes, enjoying the feel of her smooth cheek. “Who are you, really? What do you want?”

  She pressed her body close and then touched her full lips lightly to his. “I’ll tell you later,” she said.

  What the hell, he thought. This nightmare is getting better.

  The next morning it was raining and gray—almost dark, even at nine a.m. Nick and Maria had arrived together at the church. Mixed in with the prayers and clattering of rosary beads were whispers. Everyone knew where Nick had spent the night. There were stares and mutterings from the village women, and chuckles from the men. But Maria Elena didn’t care, and neither did Father Bernardino.

  “I’m sorry,” Nick whispered. “I didn’t mean to cause you grief.”

  “It’s OK. Italians are realists.” She smiled with her head down.

  Although Nick was embarrassed, it was clear that she wasn’t.

  Four caskets lined the front of the altar. As predicted, Joe and the others looked as if they were sleeping. The children were dressed in white linen. They held handmade toy lambs as was the tradition in the village for those who had died before their time. The adults looked elegant— Joe in a black silk and wool suit and Christy in a light blue satin gown. Joe now looked at peace. His features were transformed. He had a slight smile on his now pink lips. There was no hole in Christy’s forehead, and her long blond hair draped softly around her face and shoulders like an angel’s.

  They were beautiful. Too bad they weren’t alive, Nick thought.

  The small church was filled with mourners—figures in black packed the pews and aisles. Every Lorenzano was present to pay their last respects. The church bells Joe had donated mournfully tolled for this, his last visit. The women wept openly, clutching their hands together while the men hid their grief, shrugging their shoulders in acceptance.

  It rained throughout the mass, and while the caskets were being carried by horse-drawn hearses to the Maglio family’s tomb, their vigil lights burned for the capture of their killers.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Marty Silvio had slept late. He had a bad case of jet lag and needed to clear his head. He had left his wife, Celeste, in Tel Aviv where they had gone after getting the news of Joe Maglio’s death. He and Celeste had planned to go to Israel after Cairo. She didn’t want to cut their trip short. She wanted to see the Holy Land.

  Just as well, he thought. He relished the time away from her. All she did was push, nag, shop, talk on the phone, and go to church. She didn’t have an intellectual cell in her whole body. He conveniently overlooked his own boorishness when judging the shortcomings of others, especially Celeste. He didn’t know why he had married her. She wasn’t even a good lay anymore.

  He put Celeste out of his mind as he turned over and reached for Margo Griffin, the twenty-nine-year-old associate with whom he had been sleeping for three years. Margo was a Villanova Law School graduate, a slender brunette with knockout legs that she wasn’t loath to show. And her little black suits did just that. She lay on her stomach, close to him, her tight buttocks peeking out from under white silk sheets.

  The phone rang, and her hand left his groin and went automatically to the phone.

  “Oh shit!” Marty grabbed the receiver before her hand reached it. “Don’t. It might be her.” He put the phone to his ear and listened before he said anything.

  “Hello?” a distantly recognizable voice echoed through the plastic. It was Harry Levin. Silvio grimaced and handed the phone to Margo, mouthing the caller’s identity.

  She took the phone while pulling the top sheet up to cover her nudity, as if Levin could see through the phone line.

  “Mr. Levin…” She was always formal with him and Joe Maglio— a formality she didn’t extend to men with whom she slept.

  “Marty—I mean Mr. Silvio is still asleep, sir. I came over this morning to see if he had gotten home and was all right.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ll bet,” Levin said. “Let me talk to that bum.”

  “Shall I wake him, Mr. Levin?”

  “Of course. What do you think this is—a hospitality call?” He held his hand over the mouthpiece and mumbled, “Stupid bitch.”

  Margo got out of bed and moved the phone over to Silvio.

  “Marty,” she whispered, “I’m sorry, he wants to talk to you.”

  “Yeah.” Marty wiped his eyes with the silk sheet, a habit that his wife hated but that the women he slept with tolerated.

  “Yeah?” Levin yelled. “Where the fuck are you? It’s eleven a.m., and you’re still in bed?”

  Marty was awake now. “Listen— I just came halfway around the world to get back here—and you’re screaming at me?” He put an unlit cigar in his mouth.

  “OK, OK. Listen, we gotta do something about Lopez. So far she’s held up pretty good, but they know she knows a lot and I’m afraid she’s gonna crack.”

  “So what do you wanna do? Gag her—tie her up—send her back to Puerto Rico?’

  Levin was silent for a few seconds.

  “What then?”

  “Tell Rudi to watch her.”

  “Watch her? Rudi doesn’t watch—he moves, he acts. You know that, you stupid fuck.” Silvio chomped on the end of his cigar.

  Levin was silent. Then he sighed. “OK…not watch her.”

  “Then what?” Silvio liked this little game. He liked the idea of Levin coming up with solutions he had been thinking about for a long time. He motioned for Margo to come to him.

  She flopped next to him, pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her head on them. She cooed to Marty and gently stroked his balls. He smiled and pushed her head between his legs.

  “Then do her.”

  Celia Lopez pulled her car into an empty lot behind her row house on Butler Street. The lot was an abandoned parcel on which houses had once stood. The city had demolished them making way for weeds and empty bottles. The tires of her white Taurus crunched over broken glass and empty beer cans. It was ten p.m. and dark with few if any working street lights. It was eerie, but Celia had become used to it. Living in the drug center of Philadelphia was no picnic. But it was still her neighborhood where her friends and family lived. She had fixed up her house—taken it from a burned-out shell to a neat, clean, simply furnished residence. She owned it free and clear and she wasn’t about to move. Her kids were savy about the neighborhood. They knew where their friends lived in case some creep was following them. Plus the doors were bolted and iron bars protected every window. No man could get in—that is, unless he was invited,

  Tonight she thought that the lot was better than trying to find a parking space on the darkened street and possibly having to walk four or five blocks to her house. Besides it was cold and the wind was up.

  She came to a stop, put the car in park, and reached into her purse, feeling for her house keys. Celia always took them out before leaving the safety of
her car. She also carried a small flashlight, which she used to help her navigate the debris covered pavements. She didn’t want to fall and cut herself; that’s all she needed. There were used syringes all over the place. She opened the car door and shone the light on the ground as she stepped over the trash. She touched the button on her car keys, and the car doors automatically locked. Her heart was pounding as it always did when she left her car at night. She began to carefully walk through the litter towards her home. There it was. She could see it in the light of her flashlight.

  The city had neglected this part of town for more years than she could remember, leaving it to the gangs and narcs to fight over. It had become a battleground. Suddenly Celia saw a long, dark object on the ground in front of her. She wasn’t sure what it was. Could it be a dog? A large dead animal possibly? Celia shone the flashlight on it but still couldn’t tell. She gave it a wide berth. She felt better when she was past it. Whatever it was, it would still be there in the morning, she thought.

  The object moved as soon as she passed it. It rolled over and then sat up. Then it stood. It was a figure, dressed in black to match the night. The figure silently trotted up behind her. It grabbed her long hair and yanked her head back, and then slit her throat. Before she could scream, she was dead. It was clean and quick as usual. Celia was gone, and so was Rudi.

  Detective Ralph Kirby of the Philadelphia Police Homicide Division had completed his routine questioning of neighbors along the block of Butler street where Celia Lopez had lived. Four other detectives had spread out over four blocks from Sixth to Tenth streets. They covered the small side streets adjacent to Butler, checking auto license plates and talking to shop owners, bartenders, and relatives of the victim. Her daughters, Carmen and Lily, were not able to answer questions about their mother or her whereabouts in the preceding twenty-four hours. Carmen, the older sibling, was purposely silent, and the younger, Lily, couldn’t stop crying. All that Kirby and the others were able to ascertain was that Celia was a hardworking single mother who loved her two daughters, Carmen aged thirteen and Lily, nine.

  Celia had no boyfriends. She kept to herself. She was clean and respectable, though not terribly religious. She only went to mass on Christmas and Easter. She was friendly, but not overly so, and she loved her job. She would often stay late or go in on a Saturday to return calls the attorneys did not care to make, or to help with extra typing when necessary. She had no criminal record. She voted. She had fifty thousand dollars in CDs in a safe-deposit box in the local branch of the Columbia National Savings Bank. The people who had known her felt particularly bad for the two girls—Celia had adored them and had enrolled them in a Catholic school. They took piano and ballet lessons. And Kirby wasn’t able to answer the neighbors’ inquiries. What were the girls going to do without their devoted mother? He shrugged his sagging shoulders. How would he know? What did other kids do whose parents were murdered?

  There were no leads in the case—not yet, and maybe never. In a neighborhood where junkies roamed the streets, where drug dealing was routine and drug dependency was almost a residency requirement, people were not anxious to talk to the cops. This case was no different than any other where some poor son of a bitch was killed for the price of a fix. It was hit, kill, grab, and run. The motive was a quick buck. Celia’s purse had been found five blocks away.Her wallet was found in a trash can in a different location, behind a convenience store. There was no cash—just a slip showing a two-hundred-dollar withdrawal from savings. That was a hell of a lot of money for some crackhead. Celia’s credit cards were still in her wallet. This was unusual. This was no stupid, murdering thug. He’d left no trails to follow. Whoever it was, he had murdered her for cash and was smart enough not to steal her cards or her car. And that was the thing about the case which troubled Kirby. Usually in this neighborhood credit cards would be taken and quickly sold, often providing the only leads.

  Kirby shook his gray head and put on his dime-store reading glasses. He pulled his coat collar up and began to review his notes. The time of death was estimated between ten and eleven p.m. The body was clean—no bruises or scrapes, nothing to indicate a struggle. The angle of the knife wound showed she had been attacked from behind; she had probably never seen her attacker. Her carotid artery was cleanly severed. With her esophagus severed, she had been unable to breathe or call out for help. She had died quickly. Thank God.

  It was frustrating—another crime that was likely to remain unsolved, like so many others. And there he was, as usual, trying to do the impossible, trying to paint a face on a faceless murderer, trying to find a nugget in the ocean. Fat chance.

  He clumsily slid into the seat of his black Mercury Marquis and picked up the handset of the police radio. It felt good to sit in the warmth of the car. His belt was too tight, and his feet hurt. His stomach hurt, and the Kevlar vest he was wearing made him feel heavier than usual. How many more years of doing this? he wondered. Perhaps he could stand it if he lost some weight, he thought, as he sank into the black vinyl.

  “This is Kirby. Yeah, I’m parked on Butler near Eighth. It’s a real picnic out here—a model neighborhood. That’s right.” He chuckled. “Dick, I need a tow truck right away. Yeah, it’s going to the crime lab for a workup. Preliminary dusting just revealed the victim’s prints. No leads—yeah, it sucks. We’re just running in circles, as usual. I’m getting too old for this. No. No boyfriends. No jealous lovers.”

  He paused to hear the unsolicited theory of the young dispatcher: Celia was a hooker, killed by her john. What the fuck did Dick Harrison know? He was a fucking rookie: twenty-four years old, still wet behind the ears, just starting on the force, and just about good enough to do what he was told. So what if he had a certificate in criminal justice? Kirby had been on the force for twenty years, fifteen in homicide, and he was tired. He’d seen more dead bodies than a Viet Nam vet.

  “The best shot we have right now is to make a lot of busts. These junkies will sing for a deal. There’s plenty of crack houses out here—one on Eleventh. Yeah, tell the lieutenant I want to talk to him about this. Yeah, I’ll be at the district in an hour.”

  Hooker! Kirby laughed, shaking his head as he lit a cigarette and threw the match into the overflowing ashtray. The burning match fell on the floor. He stamped it out with his foot as he jabbed the down button of the driver’s side window. The car needed air. Even he thought it smelled foul.

  Was there a possible connection between the Maglio deaths and this street murder? After all, she’d worked for Maglio’s firm, and it had been less than a week since the Maglios were killed. Ridiculous, he thought as he took a deep breath of the city’s stench. He laughed at himself and started the car’s engine. Getting as bad as Harrison, he thought.

  CHAPTER IX

  Mike Rosa was on the phone expressing extreme displeasure to Philadelphia DA Muriel Gates about not being immediately informed about Celia Lopez’s murder. He was hot under the collar, but controlled. She was a woman, and he respected women. It was part of his Catholic upbringing.

  Gates knew she was being chastised although Rosa was choosing his words carefully. “I’m disappointed,” not “I’m really pissed”; and “You neglected” instead of “You failed.” She was not going to be treated like a child, nor was she going to be intimidated by a man. And she was certainly not going to apologize to Rosa or anyone else. This murder was hers. It was in her jurisdiction, over which she had complete control, control which she had rightfully earned. She was fifty-five years old—had been an assistant DA for twenty of those years—and chief of litigation for the last ten until she was elected district attorney. She had put hundreds of thugs, rapists, and murderers behind bars, and several on death row. They were all men. She knew all men were trouble, and she was not about to take crap from any man.

  She was five feet, ten inches tall, weighed one hundred sixtyfive pounds, was well muscled, and had a black belt in karate. She was also gay, not ashamed but not out of the closet.

&
nbsp; “Look, Rosa. I don’t have to explain anything to you. I don’t have to give you any information. You run the murders in your county and I’ll run the murders in mine. You do your job, I’ll do mine,” she said, nervously tapping a silver Tiffany pen on her desk.

  “Muriel, I didn’t call you to be abused.” He wanted to say, “To be shit on,” but he didn’t. He was too much of a gentleman. “All I’m asking is that you keep me informed on the Lopez case.”

  “Why?” she fired back. “Do you think there’s some tie-in with Maglio’s death? His was a suicide—this one’s a murder.

  A drug-related hit. It’s just a coincidence that they were from the same office and that they’re both dead—that’s all…”

  Theresa White, Gates’s secretary, brought in a cup of tea and a croissant. Gates waved her away. She was in no mood for breakfast.

  Rosa interrupted. “Our investigation is continuing. This is a high-profile case…” He didn’t have a chance to finish the sentence.

  “Maglio’s death was ruled a suicide by your own coroner. I respect Guy Wilkes as one of the best. Matching fingerprints on the weapon, all victim’s shot by the same weapon, around the same time. Powder burns on Maglio’s hand, a defective surveillance tape showing nothing.”

  “All true, Muriel, but just as a courtesy I’d like copies of all your reports. Joe was my friend…” Rosa was now having difficulty controlling his temper. At this point she was getting to him. He began clearing his throat and counting backwards from ten. He glanced at the framed picture of his wife Helen and his three boys on the credenza to his right. It was a technique that helped lower his blood pressure. “Please, Muriel. I’m asking as a matter of professional courtesy.”