Omerta - Mario Puzo [103]
Boxton suddenly knew this was true.
Kurt Cilke prepared for another meeting with the director in Washington. He had his notes with an outline of what he would say and a report on all the circumstances of the attack on his home.
As always, Bill Boxton would accompany him, but this time it was at the express wish of the director.
Cilke and Boxton were in the director’s office with its row of TV monitors showing reports of activities of the local FBI office. The director, always courteous, shook hands with both men and invited them to sit down, though he gave Boxton a cold, fishy look. Two of his deputies were in attendance.
“Gentlemen,” he said, addressing the whole group. “We have to clean up this mess. We cannot allow such an outrageous act to go without answering it with all our resources. Cilke, do you want to stay on the job or take retirement?”
“I stay,” Cilke said.
The director turned to Boxton, and his lean aristocratic face was stern. “You were in charge. How is it that all the attackers were killed and we have no one to interrogate? Who gave the order to fire? You? And on what grounds?”
Boxton sat up in his chair stiffly. “Sir,” he said, “the attackers threw a bomb in the house and opened fire. There was no choice.”
The director sighed. One of his deputies gave a grunt of scorn.
“Captain Sestak is one of our beauties,” the director said. “Did he try, at least, for one prisoner?”
“Sir, it was over in two minutes,” Boxton said. “Sestak is a very efficient tactician in the field.”
“Well, there hasn’t been any fuss by the media or the public,” the director said. “But I must say I consider it a bloodbath.”
“Yes, it was,” volunteered one of the deputies.
“Well, it can’t be helped,” the director said. “Cilke, have you come up with an operational plan?”
Cilke had felt a surge of anger at their criticism, but he answered calmly. “I want a hundred men assigned to my office. I want you to request a full audit of the Aprile banks. I am going into deep background on everyone involved in this business.”
The director said, “You don’t feel any debt to this Astorre Viola for saving you and your family?”
“No,” Cilke said. “You have to know these people. First they get you into trouble, then they help you out.”
The director said, “Remember, one of our primary interests is to appropriate the Aprile banks. Not only because we benefit but because those banks are destined to be a center for laundering drug money. And through them we get Portella and Tulippa. We have to look at this as global. Astorre Viola refuses to sell the banks, and the syndicate is trying to eliminate him. So far they’ve failed. We have learned that the two hired killers who shot the Don have disappeared. Two detectives in the NYPD were blown up.”
“Astorre is cunning and elusive, and he isn’t involved in any rackets,” Cilke told them, “so we can’t really put something on him. Now, the syndicate may succeed in getting rid of him, and the children will sell the banks to them. Then I’m sure in a couple of years they will step over the line.”
It was not unusual for government law enforcement to play a long game, especially with the drug people. But to do so they had to permit crimes to be committed.
“We’ve played it long before,” the director said. “But that doesn’t mean you give Portella carte blanche.”
“Of course,” Cilke said. He knew that everyone was speaking for the record.
“I’ll give fifty men,” the director said. “And I’ll request a full audit of the banks just to shake things up.”
One of the deputies said, “We have audited them before and never found anything.”
“There’s always a chance,” Cilke said. “Astorre is no banker, and he could have made mistakes.”
“Yes,” the director said. “One little slip is all the attorney general needs.”
Back in New York Cilke met with Boxton and Sestak to plan his campaign. “We’re getting fifty more men to investigate the attack on my home,” he told them. “We have to be very careful. I want everything