Omerta - Mario Puzo [86]
Heskow, exiting in the rear of the pizza shop, felt the air press his body against the building. Then he jumped into his car and twenty minutes later was in his home in Brightwaters. He made himself a quick drink and checked the two packets of hundred-dollar bills he had taken out of the duffel bag. Forty grand—a nice little bonus. He’d give his kid a couple of grand for spending money. No, a grand. And sock the rest away.
He watched the late TV news that reported the explosion as a breaking story. One detective killed, the other badly hurt. And at the scene, a duffel bag with a huge amount of money. The TV anchor didn’t say how much.
When Aspinella Washington regained consciousness in the hospital two days later, she was not surprised to be closely questioned about the money and why it was just forty grand shy of a half million. She denied she had any knowledge of the money. They questioned her about what a chief of detectives and an assistant chief were doing out together. She refused to answer on the grounds that it was a personal matter. But she was angry that they questioned her so relentlessly when she was obviously in such grave condition. The department didn’t give a shit about her. They did not honor her record of achievement. But it ended OK. The department didn’t pursue her and set it up so that the investigation of the money came to nothing.
It took another week of convalescence for Aspinella to figure things out. They had been set up. And the only guy who could have set them up was Heskow. And the fact that there was forty grand missing from the payoff meant the greedy pig couldn’t resist grafting his own people. Well, she would get better, she thought, and then she would meet with Heskow once again.
CHAPTER 10
ASTORRE was now very careful of his movements. Not only to avoid a hit but also not to allow himself to be arrested for any reason. He kept close to his heavily guarded home with its five-man round-the-clock security teams. He had sensors planted in the woods and grounds around the house and infrared lights for night surveillance. When he ventured out, it was with six bodyguards in three two-man teams. He sometimes traveled alone, counting on stealth and surprise and a confidence in his own powers if he should meet only one of two assassins. The blowing up of the two detectives had been necessary, but it generated a lot of heat. And when Aspinella Washington recovered she would figure out it was Heskow who had betrayed her. And if Heskow spilled, she would come after Astorre himself.
But by now he knew the enormity of his problem. He knew all the men guilty of the Don’s death and the serious problems before him. There was Kurt Cilke, essentially untouchable; Timmona Portella, who ordered the murder; as well as Inzio Tulippa and Michael Grazziella. The only ones he had succeeded in punishing were the Sturzo brothers, and they had been mere pawns.
All the information had come from John Heskow, Mr. Pryor, Don Craxxi, and Octavius Bianco in Sicily. If possible, he had to get all his enemies in one place at the same time. To pick them off singly would surely be impossible. And Mr. Pryor and Craxxi had already warned him he could not touch Cilke.
And then there was the consul general of Peru, Marriano Rubio, Nicole’s companion. What was the extent of her loyalty to him? What had she blotted out in the Don’s FBI file that she did not want Astorre to see? What was she hiding from him?
In his spare moments, Astorre dreamed of the women he had loved. First there had been Nicole, so young and so willful, her small, delicate body so passionate that she had forced him into loving her. And now how changed she was, her passion absorbed by politics and her career.
He remembered Buji in Sicily, not exactly a call girl, but very close, and with an impulsive goodness that could easily turn into rage. He remembered her gorgeous bed, in the soft Sicilian nights, when they swam and ate olives out of oil-filled barrels. Most