Omerta - Mario Puzo [24]
“No,” Di Benedetto said. “I’m easy to please. That’s the whole problem.”
Cilke sighed. “Two hundred bucks of government money shot to shit.”
“Oh, no,” Di Benedetto replied. “I appreciate the gesture. Now, what’s up?”
Cilke ordered espresso for both of them. Then he said, “I’m investigating the Don Aprile killing. A case of yours, Paul. We kept tabs on him for years and nothing. He retires, lives straight. He has nothing anybody wants. So why the killing? A very dangerous thing for anybody to do.”
“Very professional,”Di Benedetto said. “A beautiful piece of work.”
Cilke said, “So?”
“It doesn’t make any sort of sense,” Di Benedetto said. “You wiped out most of the Mafia bigwigs, a brilliant job too. My hat’s off to you. Maybe you even forced this Don to retire. So the wiseguys that are left have no reason to knock him off.”
“What about the string of banks he owns?” Cilke asked.
Di Benedetto waved his cigar. “That’s your line of work. We just go after the riffraff.”
“What about his family?” Cilke said. “Drugs, women chasing, anything?”
“Absolutely not,” Di Benedetto said. “Upstanding citizens with big professional careers. The Don planned it that way. He wanted them to be absolutely straight.” He paused now, and he was deadly serious. “It’s not a grudge. He squared everything with everybody. It’s not random. There has to be a reason. Somebody gains. That’s what we’re looking for.”
“What about his will?” Cilke asked.
“His daughter files it tomorrow. I asked. She told me to wait.”
“And you stood still for it?” Cilke asked.
“Sure,” Di Benedetto said. “She’s a top-notch lawyer, she has clout, and her law firm is a political force. Why the hell would I try to get tough with her? I just ate out of her hand.”
“Maybe I can do better,” Cilke said.
“I’m sure you can.”
Kurt Cilke had known the assistant chief of detectives, Aspinella Washington, for over ten years. She was a six-foot-tall African-American with close-cropped hair and finely chiseled features. She was a terror to the police she commanded and the felons she apprehended. By design, she acted as offensively as possible, and she really wasn’t too fond of Cilke or the FBI.
She received Cilke in her office by saying,“Kurt, are you here to make one of my black brethren wealthy again?”
Cilke laughed. “No, Aspinella,” he said. “I’m here looking for information.”
“Really,” she said. “For free? After you cost the city five million dollars?”
She was wearing a safari jacket and tan trousers. Beneath her jacket he could see the holstered gun. On her right hand was a diamond ring that looked as if it could cut through facial tissue like a razor.
She still bore a grudge against Cilke because the FBI had proven a brutality case against her detectives and on the basis of civil rights the victim had won a huge judgment—and also sent two of her detectives to jail. The victim, who had gotten rich, had been a pimp and drug pusher whom Aspinella herself had once severely beaten. Although she had been appointed assistant chief as a political sop to the black vote, she functioned much more toughly on black felons than on whites.
“Stop beating innocent people,” Cilke said, “and I’ll stop.”
“I never framed anyone who wasn’t guilty,” she said, grinning.
“I’m just checking in on the Don Aprile murder,” Cilke said.
“What’s it your business? It’s a local gang hit. Or are you making that another fucking civil rights case?”
“Well, it could be related to currency or drugs,” Cilke said.
“And how do you know that?” Aspinella asked.
“We have our informers.”
Suddenly Aspinella was in one of her rages. “You fucking FBI guys come in for info and then you won’t give me any? You guys are not even honest-to-god cops. You float around arresting white-collar pricks. You never get into the dirty work. You don’t know what the hell that is. Get the fuck out of my office.”
Cilke was pleased with the interviews. Their pattern was clear to him. Both Di Benedetto and Aspinella were going to go into the tank on the Don Aprile murder. They would not cooperate with