Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [135]
“They don’t have a choice,” Boomer said. “They’re not gonna blow us out of the sky and they’re not gonna rat us out. Besides, half the guys we deal with would kill for the chance to be with us.”
“Lucia’s expectin’ you to go after her,” Nunzio said. “That should be worth a thought.”
“I think it’s time we met,” Boomer said. “After all we’ve been through together.”
• • •
DEPUTY INSPECTOR MARK Lavetti stood under the awning of a doorman building on Madison Avenue, fixing the collar on his brown tweed jacket. He was a handsome man in his early forties, his lean figure topped by a thick head of curly dark hair. He had been a member of the New York City Police Department for twenty-one years and had never recorded a major arrest. He was a test cop, making his steady climb up the ranks by cracking open books in schools rather than cracking heads out on the streets.
He was born with a taste for the sweet life and from his first weeks at the Police Academy was quick to smoke out a pad and how best to squeeze his way in on the action. He took his first envelope while still wearing the grays of a trainee, fifty a week to fill a local dealer in on which probie cops were eager to score free joints and lines, no questions asked. In return, the dealer sold their names to the turf leader of their precinct.
By the time he stood under the awning of the building on Madison Avenue, Mark Lavetti was pulling down twenty-five thousand in cash a month, feeding info to major dealers in the five boroughs. He never went near the money himself, instead using a rotating team of relatives as a pickup posse, letting them move the cash from sealed locker to selected bank and mutual fund accounts.
Lavetti was a master at covering the money trail.
His three-bedroom co-op was in his mother’s name. The sporty Corvette he drove when not on duty was owned tire and gearshift by a sister in Mineola. He had a summer home in Woodstock mortgaged to an uncle living in a nursing home. His yearly vacations came courtesy of a cousin who ran a tourist agency.
Despite the rumors floating out of various precincts, the top brass saw Mark Lavetti exactly as he wanted to be seen—a clean cop riding the fast track.
His biggest score had also been his easiest.
Mark Lavetti was on the phone seconds after Joseph Silvestri walked out of his One Police Plaza office. He listened to the sad man tell him about his wife’s involvement with a band of disabled cops, assured him all would be kept confidential, then set up a meeting with a main feeder to Lucia Carney’s drug business. Outside Gate D at Shea Stadium, Lavetti handed over the six names of the Apaches to a man he knew would want them dead. In return, he accepted a manila envelope crammed with $100,000 in cash.
And he never gave the matter another thought.
Lavetti walked at a brisk pace down Madison, wondering whether to detour over to Lincoln Center to pick up a pair of opera tickets for himself and his new girlfriend, a model who was easily impressed by such things, or wait until after dinner and then drive past. His car was parked at the corner of Sixty-second Street, next to a hydrant, an official NYPD tag in the front window. As he got closer, he noticed a dark blue sedan double-parked close to his car, blocking his exit, the driver nowhere in sight.
He took the keys from the front pocket of his slacks, ready to call in the car and have a truck come tow it, angry he hadn’t just parked in the building garage as usual.
“Where you off to tonight, Inspector?” Boomer asked, coming out of the shadows of a shuttered dry cleaners, standing behind Lavetti, both hands in his jacket pockets.
“Who the fuck are you?” Lavetti asked.
“I’m surprised you don’t recognize me,” Boomer said. “I’m an Apache.”
“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Lavetti asked. But a shift in his tone betrayed his disquiet.
“You put a price on me.” Boomer stepped closer, holding the urge to pull the trigger on the gun inside his jacket. “And on my friends. Somebody