The Assassin boh-5 Page 8

  "Who's they?"

  "Chief Lowenstein himself was down here a couple of hours ago," Marchessi said.

  Vito knew who Chief Lowenstein was. Of all the chief inspectors, it was six one way and half a dozen the other if Lowenstein or Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin had the most clout. It was unusual that Lowenstein would personally concern himself with seeing that some young woman was not bothered with the press. "How come the special treatment?"

  Marchessi said, more than a little sarcastically, "I guess if your father runs and maybe owns a big piece of Nesfoods, you get a little special treatment."

  The bell rang, signaling that the luggage conveyor was about to start moving. Vito nodded at Marchessi and Martinez and walked to the conveyor and waited until his luggage appeared. He grabbed it, then went back into the terminal and walked through it to the Airport Unit office. He walked past without going in, and went to the parking area reserved for police officers either working the Airport Unit or visiting it, where he had left his car.

  His car, a five-year-old Buick coupe, gave him a hard time starting. He had about given up on it when it finally gasped into life.

  "Piece of shit!" he said aloud, and then had a pleasant thought: When he was finished work tomorrow, he would get rid of the sonofabitch. What he would like to have was a four-door Cadillac. He could probably make a good deal on one a year, eighteen months old. That would mean only twelve, fifteen thousand miles. A Caddy is just starting to get broken in with a lousy fifteen thousand miles on the clock, and you save a bunch of money.

  Just because you did all right at the tables, Vito Lanza thought, is no reason to throw money away on a new car. Most people can't tell the fucking difference between a new one and one a year, eighteen months old, anyway.

  ****

  Corporal Vito Lanza lived with his widowed mother, Magdalena, a tiny, intense, silver-haired woman of sixty-six in the house in which he had grown up. She managed to remind him at least once a day that the row house in the 400 block of Ritner Street in South Philadelphia was in her name, and that he was living there, rent free, only out of the goodness of her heart.

  When he finally found a place to park the goddamned Buick and walked up to the house, Magdalena Lanza was sitting on a folding aluminum and plastic webbing lawn chair on the sidewalk, in the company of Mrs. D'Angelo (two houses down toward South Broad Street) and Mrs. Marino (the house next door, toward the Delaware River). She had an aluminum colander in her lap, into which she was breaking green beans from a paper bag on the sidewalk beside her.

  Vito nodded at Mrs. D'Angelo and Mrs. Marino and kissed his mother and said, "Hi, Ma" and handed her a two-pound box of Italian chocolates he had bought for her in the gift shop at the Flamingo in Vegas.

  She nodded her head, but that was all the thanks he got.

  "The toilet's running again," Mrs. Lanza said. "And there's rust in the hot water. You either got to fix it, or give me the money to call the plumber."

  "I'll look at it," Vito said, and went into the house.

  To the right was the living room, a long, dark room full of heavy furniture. A lithograph of Jesus Christ with his arms held out in front of him hung on the wall. Immediately in front of him was the narrow stairway to the second floor, and the equally narrow passageway that led to the kitchen in the rear of the house. Off the kitchen was the small dark dining room furnished with a table, six chairs, and a china cabinet.

  He went up the stairs and a few steps down the corridor to his room. It was furnished with a single bed, a dresser, a small desk, and a floor lamp. There were pictures on the wall, showing Vito when he made his first communion at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, his graduation class at Mount Carmel Parochial School, Vito in his graduation gown and tasseled hat at Bishop John Newmann High School, and Vito in police uniform and his father the day he graduated from the Philadelphia Police Academy. There was also an eighteen-inch-long plaster representation of Jesus Christ on his crucifix.

  Vito tossed his bags on the bed and went down the corridor to the bathroom. He voided his bladder, flushed the toilet, and waited to see if the toilet was indeed running.

  It was, and he took the top off the water box and looked at the mechanism.

  He didn't know what the fuck was wrong with it. He jiggled the works, and it stopped running. Then he ran the hot water in the sink, letting it fill the bowl. When he had, he couldn't even see the fucking drain in the bottom.

  Sonofabitch!

  The simplest thing to do would be to give his mother the money and tell her to call the plumber. But if he did that, there was certain to be some crack about his father, May He Rest In Peace, never having once in all the years they were married calling a plumber.

  After work tomorrow, Vito decided, I'll go by Sears and get one of those goddamned repair kits. And see what they want to replace the fucking hot water heater.

  FIVE

  "Mayor Carlucci's residence," Violetta Forchetti said, clearly but with a distinct Neapolitan accent when she picked up the telephone.

  Violetta was thirty-five but looked older. She was slight of build, and somewhat sharp-faced. She had come to the United States from Naples seventeen years before to marry Salvatore Forchetti, who was twenty-five and had himself immigrated four years previously.

  There had just been time for them to get married, and for Violetta to become with child when, crossing 9^th and Mifflin Streets in South Philadelphia, they were both struck by a hit-and-run driver. Salvatore died instantly, and Violetta, who lost the child, had spent four months in St. Agnes's Hospital.

  The then commander of the 6^th District of the Philadelphia Police Department, Captain Jerry Carlucci, had taken the incident personally. He was himself of Neapolitan heritage, had known Sal, who had found work as a butcher, and been a guest at their wedding.

  He had suggested to his wife that it might be a nice thing for her to go to St. Agnes's Hospital, see what the poor woman needed, and tell her she had his word that he would find the hit-and-run driver and see that he got what was coming to him.

  Angeline Carlucci, who looked something like Violetta Forchetti, returned from the hospital and told him things were even worse than they looked. Violetta's parents were dead. The relatives who had arranged for her to come to America and marry Salvatore didn't want her back in Naples. She was penniless, a widow in a strange country.

  When Violetta got out of the hospital, she moved in temporarily with Captain and Mrs. Carlucci, Jerry's idea being that when he caught the sonofabitch who had run them down, he would get enough money out of the bastard's insurance company to take care of Violetta, to make her look like a desirable wife to some other hard-working young man.

  They never found the sonofabitch who had been driving the car. So when Jerry and Angeline, right after he'd made inspector, moved out of their house on South Rosewood Street in South Philly to the new house (actually it was thirty years old) on Crefield Street, Violetta went with them. She was good with the kids, the kids loved her, and Angeline needed a little help around the house.

  A number of young, hard-working, respectable men were introduced to Violetta, but she just wasn't interested in any of them. She had found her place in life, working for the Carluccis, almost a member of the family.

  When, as police commissioner, Jerry bought the big house in Chestnut Hill, and did it over, they turned three rooms in the attic into an apartment for Violetta, and she just about took over running the place, the things that Angeline no longer had the time to do herself.

  It was said, and it was probably true, that Violetta would kill for the Carlucci family. It was true that Violetta did a better job of working the mayor's phone than any secretary he'd ever had in the Roundhouse or City Hall. When she handed him the phone, he knew that it was somebody he should talk to, not some nut or ding-a-ling.

  "Matt Lowenstein, Violetta," the caller said. "How are you?"

  "Just a minute, Chief," Violetta said. Chief Inspector Lowenstein was one of the
very few people who got to talk to the mayor whenever he called, even in the middle of the night, when she had to put her robe on and go downstairs and wake him up.

  The Honorable Jerry Carlucci, who was fifty-one years old and had an almost massive body and dark brown hair and eyes, was wearing an apron with CHIEF COOK painted on it when Violetta went into the kitchen of the Chestnut Hill mansion. He was in the act of examining with great interest one of two chicken halves he had been marinating for the past two hours, and which, when he had concluded they had been soaked enough, he planned to broil on a charcoal stove for himself and Angeline.

  "Excellence, it is Chief Lowenstein," Violetta said.

  Violetta had firm Italianate ideas about the social structure of the world. Jerry had never been able to get her to call him "Mister." It had at first been "Captain," which was obviously more prestigious than "Mister," then "Inspector" as he had worked his way up the hierarchy from staff inspector through inspector to chief inspector, and then "Excellence" from the time he'd been made a deputy commissioner.

  He joked with Angeline that Violetta had run out of titles with " Excellence." There were only two more prestigious: "Your Majesty" and "Your Holiness," plus maybe "Your Grace," none of which, obviously, fit.

  "Grazie,"he said and went to the wall-mounted telephone by the door.

  "How's my favorite Hebrew?" the mayor said.

  He and Matt Lowenstein went way back. And he was fully aware that behind his back, Matt Lowenstein referred to him as "The Dago."

  "The package from Las Vegas, Mr. Mayor, arrived safely at the airport, and two minutes ago passed through the gates in Chestnut Hill."

  "No press?"

  "Ardell-Paul Ardell, the Airport lieutenant?-"

  "I know who he is."

  "He said he didn't see any press. We probably attracted more attention taking her off the plane that way than if we' d just let Payne walk her through the terminal."

  "Yeah, maybe. But this way, Matt, we did Detweiler a favor. And if Payne had walked her into the airport and there had been a dozen assholes from the TV and the newspapers…"

  "You're right, of course."

  "I'm always right, you should remember that."

  "Yes, sir, Mr. Mayor."

  "You free for lunch tomorrow?"

  That'scant, Matt Lowenstein thought, having recently discovered that cant without the apostrophe meant that what was said was deceitful or hypocritical.What Jerry Carlucci was really saying was, " If you had something you wanted to do for lunch tomorrow, forget it."

  "Yeah, sure."

  "Probably the Union League at twelve-thirty. If there's a change, I'll have my driver call yours."

  "Okay. Anything special?"

  "Czernick called an hour or so ago," the mayor said. "The Secret Service told him what I already knew. The Vice President's going to honor Philadelphia with his presence."

  Taddeus Czernick was police commissioner of the City of Philadelphia.

  "It was in the papers."

  "Maybe Czernick's driver was too busy to read the papers to him," the mayor said.

  Jerry Carlucci was not saying unkind things behind Commissioner Czernick's back. He regularly got that sort of abuse in person. Matt Lowenstein had long ago decided that Carlucci not only really did not like Czernick, but held him in a great deal of contempt.

  But Lowenstein had also long ago figured out that Czernick would probably be around as commissioner as long as Carlucci was the mayor. His loyalty to Carlucci was unquestioned, almost certainly because he very much liked being the police commissioner, and was very much aware that he served at Carlucci's pleasure.

  "Half past twelve at the Union League," Lowenstein said. "I'll look forward to it."

  Carlucci laughed.

  "Don't bullshit a bullshitter, Matt," he said, and then added, "I just had an idea about Payne too."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I'm still thinking about it. I'll tell you, tomorrow. You callWhatsisname?-At the airport?"

  "Paul Ardell?"

  "Yeah, right. And tell him I said thanks for a job well done."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Good night, Matt. Thank you."

  "Good night, Mr. Mayor."

  ****

  Marion Claude Wheatley made pork chops, green beans, apple sauce, and mashed potatoes for his supper. He liked to cook, was good at it, and when he made his own supper not only was it almost certainly going to be better than what he could get at one of the neighborhood restaurants, but it spared him both having to eat alone in public and from anything unpleasant that might happen on the way home from the restaurant.

  Marion lived in the house in which he had grown up, in the 5000 block of Beaumont Street, just a few blocks off Baltimore Avenue and not far from the 49^th Street Station. There was no point in pretending that the neighborhood was not deteriorating, but that didn' t mean his house was deteriorating. He took a justifiable pride in knowing that he was just as conscientious about taking care of the house as his father had been.

  If something needed painting, it got painted. If one of the faucets started dripping, he went to the workshop in the basement and got the proper tools and parts and fixed it.

  About the only difference in the house between now and when Mom and Dad had been alive was the burglar bars and the burglar alarm system. Marion had had to have a contractor install the burglar bars, which were actually rather attractive, he thought, wrought iron. The burglar alarm system he had installed himself.

  Marion had been taught about electrical circuits in the Army. He could almost certainly have avoided service by staying in college, but that would have been dishonorable. His father had served in World War II as a major with the 28^th Division. He would have been shamed if his son had avoided service when his country called upon him.

  He had taken Basic Training at Fort Dix, and then gone to Fort Riley for Officer Candidate School, and been commissioned into the Ordnance Corps. He had been trained as an ammunition supply officer, and then they had asked him if he would be interested in volunteering to become an Explosive Ordnance Disposal officer before he went to Vietnam. Marion hadn't even known what that meant when they asked him. They told him that EOD officers commanded small detachments of specialists who were charged with disposing of enemy and our own ordnance, which he understood to mean artillery and mortar shells, primarily, which had been fired but which for some reason hadn't exploded when they landed.

  Sometimes shells and rockets could be disarmed, which meant that their detonating mechanisms were rendered inoperative, but sometimes that wasn't possible, and the explosive ordnance had to be "blown in place."

  That meant that Explosive Ordnance Disposal people had to be trained in explosives, even though, as an officer, he wouldn't be expected to do the work himself, but instead would supervise the enlisted specialists.

  That training had included quite a bit about electrical circuits, about which Marion had previously known absolutely nothing.

  But what he had learned in the Army was more than enough for him to easily install the burglar alarm. Actually, it was plural. Alarms. There was one system that detected intrusion of the house on the first floor. If the alarm system was active, and any window, or outside door, on the first floor was opened, that set off one warning buzzer and a light on the control panel Marion had set up in what had been Mom and Dad's bedroom, but was now his.

  The second system did the same thing for windows on the second floor and the two dormer windows in the attic. The third system protected the powder magazine only. The powder magazine was in the basement. It had originally been a larder where Mom had stored tomatoes mostly, but beans too, and chow-chow and things like that. Marion liked cooking, but he wasn't about to start canning things the way Mom had. It wasn't worth it.

  The first time he had put something in the powder magazine, it was still a larder. That was when he had come from Vietnam on emergency leave when Mom had gotten so sick. At the time, he had wondered why it was
so important that he knew he had to bring twenty-seven pounds ofCzechoslovakiaplastique and two dozen detonators home with him. Now, of course, he knew. It was all part of God's plan.

  If God hadn't wanted him to bring theplastique home, then when the MPs at Tan Son Nhut had randomly inspected outbound transient luggage, they would have selected his to inspect, and taken it away from him.

  Marion hadn't then yet learned that when something odd or out of the ordinary happens, that he didn't have to worry about it, because it was invariably God's plan, and sooner or later, he would come to understand what the Lord had had in mind.

  When he'd come home, Mom was already in University Hospital, but there was a colored lady taking care of the house, and he didn't want her hurting herself in any way, so he had put theplastique and the detonators in the larder and put a padlock on the door.

  God had put off taking Mom into Heaven until they had had a chance to say good-bye, but not much more than that. He had been home seventy-two hours when the Lord called her home. And then he'd had those embarrassing weeping sessions whenever he thought of Mom or Dad or all the kids (he thought of them as kids, although they weren't much younger than he was) who'd fouled up, or been unlucky and been disintegrated, and they hadn't sent him back to Vietnam, but instead to Fort Eustis, Virginia, as an instructor in demolitions to young officers in the Engineer Basic Officer School.

  They used mostly Composition C-4 at Eustis, which wasn't as good as the Czechoslovakianplastique the Viet Cong used, and sometimes just ordinary dynamite, and when he was setting up the demonstrations, he often slipped a little Composition C-4, or a stick of dynamite, or a length of primer cord, in his field jacket pocket and then brought it to Philadelphia and put it in the larder when he came home on weekends.

  God, of course, had been making him do that, even though at the time he hadn't understood it.