Kings of Midnight Read online

They rode down in silence. She believed Leonard—or whatever his name was—about the crew he’d run with, his part in the robbery. He looked the type, a New York wiseguy forty hard years down the road. But where the money was now, or even if it existed, was another thing.

  Out in the parking lot, Anthony nodded at a brown Volvo sedan. She followed him. The day was cold, the sky cloudless.

  When they reached the Volvo, she said, “Not what I would have guessed.”

  “You expecting a Lincoln?”

  “Maybe.”

  “This is my Dadmobile. I’m a dad.”

  He unlocked the door, got behind the wheel, leaned over and opened the glove box, came out with a thick legal-size manila envelope.

  “It’s all in here. But like I said, if I were you, I’d ditch those twenties soon as you can.”

  She slipped the envelope in her coat pocket. “Thanks.”

  “Sorry the news wasn’t better.”

  She looked up at the sky. “I should have expected it, way my luck’s been running lately.”

  “Maybe it’s getting ready to change.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But I have my doubts.”

  ELEVEN

  She opened the envelope, shook out the money on the kitchen counter. He’d marked the bad bills with tiny Xs in the lower left-hand corners. She took a closer look at those bills, noted the paper was slightly brighter, the printing less sharp than on the others.

  She divided the money into two piles. The real bills came to $9,880. She exhaled. There was nothing for it. What was gone was gone.

  She disconnected the kitchen smoke detector, burned the bad twenties in the sink. She took her time, only adding another bill when the previous one was almost gone. She watched them curl and smoke, Andrew Jackson’s face darkening, then disappearing, in the hungry flame.

  When she was finished, she opened a window to vent the smoke, turned on the faucet. The ashes swirled, dirty water circling the drain.

  She got her laptop, opened it on the kitchen table. Her cell buzzed. Rathka’s number.

  “What did you find out?” she said.

  “A little. But I need to ask you again: Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine. What do you know?”

  “Cavanaugh’s in custody. Possession with intent. His two associates too, one with a gunshot wound. Newark police are still trying to sort it all out. I think the assumption is, it was a drug deal gone wrong.”

  “Close enough,” she said. “Are they talking?”

  “Not that I’ve heard. Cavanaugh will post bond, though, if he hasn’t already. For the others, too. You could be in danger.”

  “I’ll take my chances. This isn’t over. But I’ll deal with it when I’m ready.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “He owes me money.”

  “Your best bet right now is to stay as far away from him as possible.”

  “I will,” she said. “For now. But sooner or later, this gets settled. It’s not just about the money.”

  “No,” he said. “I guess it never is.”

  When he ended the call, she powered up the laptop, logged into the house’s Wi-Fi signal. She went to a search engine, typed in LUFTHANSA ROBBERY 1978. A list of stories filled the screen. She clicked on the first one and started to read.

  * * *

  When he opened the passenger door and got in, she said, “Should I call you Leonard or Benny?”

  He shut the door. “Up to you, I guess. Where are we going?”

  “For a ride, talk a little.” They were in the parking lot of a Target store just off the Garden State Parkway. She’d gotten there an hour before they were supposed to meet, parked and waited, watching the lot. He’d shown up on time, alone, in a battered green Hyundai with Indiana plates.

  She started the engine, pulled out of the spot. The sky was slate gray, rain coming soon.

  “First thing you need to do,” she said, “is get rid of that car. Or at least the plates. If someone’s looking for you, you won’t be hard to find, driving around in that thing.”

  “It’s the only car I’ve got.”

  “Figure something else out. It’s no good.”

  She circled the lot, eyeing the rearview.

  “I wasn’t followed, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said.

  “You sure about that?”

  “I kept an eye out. Like I said, I’m a little paranoid these days.”

  “I don’t blame you, from what I’ve read.” She got on the Parkway ramp, headed south.

  “How much do you know?” he said.

  “Enough. I did some research. Then I talked to our mutual friend again.”

  “And?”

  “He backs up your story, as far as it goes.”

  “Then you definitely know more about me than I do about you.”

  “Way it’ll stay for the time being, I’m afraid.”

  “What do I call you?”

  “Linda’s fine.”

  “That your real name?”

  “It’s the one on my driver’s license.”

  “Fair enough.”

  She slowed as they crossed the Driscoll Bridge, wind pushing against the car. There was a service area ahead. She signaled for the exit, watched the rearview. No one followed them onto the ramp.

  “Why are you stopping?” he said.

  “This is as good a place as any.”

  She drove past the main building and the gas station, found a spot at the far end of the commuter lot.

  She shut the engine off. “Okay, Benny. Let’s talk.”

  “We’re just gonna sit here?”

  “Clock’s ticking.”

  Wind blew grit against the car. He looked out the window.

  “Maybe I’m having second thoughts,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “Jimmy vouched for you and all, but I still don’t know much about you. How do I know this isn’t all a setup, that you work for the G?”

  “I could ask you the same, with better reason. After all, you did work for the G. How do I know you don’t still?”

  “I can give you my word, for what that’s worth. More importantly, Jimmy may be an old guy now, but he still knows a lot of people. If I scammed him on this, even now, he’d find a way to put a hurting on me. It would only take a couple phone calls. Why would I risk that?”

  “Good point. So where’s that leave us?”

  “Trusting each other, I guess. At least for a while. So, you did some research. You know I wasn’t bullshitting you.”

  “I know what happened. It’s the aftermath I’m unclear on. And where you fit in.”

  “Okay.” He shifted to face her. “There’s been a lot written about those days. Some of it’s true. A lot of it’s bullshit. The crew I was with back then, we were out of Queens, near the airport. We were boosting swag from there all the time, grabbing the trucks as soon as they left the cargo area. We bled that place dry.”

  “Didn’t figure you for a stickup guy.”

  “Most of them were give-ups, where the driver was in on it. It was a good gig. Nobody really got hurt, if they were smart. I was a kid then, twenty-two, twenty-three, making a couple grand a week. Big money back in those days.”

  “Big money now.”

  “Never could hold on to it, though. Always my problem. Booze, broads, clothes, cars. Coke, for a while.”

  “Jump ahead.”

  “Sorry. Good times for the most part. I was living it up, thought it would never end. Guys like me, we ruled the city back then.”

  He looked out at the cars passing by on the Parkway.

  “I worked my way up. I was a good earner. Gambling, taking bets, then finally fixing games. That’s where the real money was. A lot easier on the nerves, too. Then, a bookie I know came to me, said he had this guy who was into him for a lot of dough. He couldn’t pay, so instead he told him about this score he had all set up, was just looking for someone to do it.”

 
“The airport.”

  “Yeah. This guy worked there, knew the operation. He had the whole thing mapped out. It sounded good, too. I passed it on to Jimmy the Gent. He wasn’t exactly a skipper—he couldn’t be, because he wasn’t Italian—but he was the equivalent, you know?”

  “You worked for him?”

  “I was under his wing, put it that way. He liked me, because I had an eye for the angles, could figure things out. But the Gent, he was no slouch, either. A very intelligent guy. Generous with his friends, too, as long as you didn’t get on his bad side. Not somebody you wanted mad at you.”

  It was all more than she needed to know, but she let him tell it, not wanting to interrupt him now.

  “Jimmy liked the airport score. He started putting a crew together, working out the details. First he had to get approval from Joey D, who ran things around there. Even so, the whole job came together in like a month.”

  “What was your part?”

  “I brought it to him, that was it. I wasn’t in on the planning. When it finally happened I wasn’t even in New York. I was up in Maine on a bullshit gambling charge when it all went down.”

  “In custody?”

  “Nah, out on bond, waiting for trial. Jimmy had promised me a finder’s fee. A good one, too. I was thinking about buying my own McDonald’s on Queens Boulevard. No shit, really. You could buy in for, like, fifty grand then. It would have been a gold mine.”

  “What happened at the airport?”

  “Jimmy picked seven guys. Six to go in, one to drive the van.”

  “Too many.”

  “Maybe. Way it turned out, you’re probably right. Three A.M. when they went in, so there weren’t many employees around. They tied up the ones that were there, made the supervisor open the vault. Cartons of money in there, mostly fifties and hundreds. They grabbed everything they could, loaded the van, got the hell out of there. It was sweet.”

  “Sorry you missed out?”

  “Nah. By that point, waving a gun around wasn’t my idea of how to make a buck. When I heard about it, though, I couldn’t believe it. They thought they were going to take two, three million out of there. Turned out to be more like ten, nobody really knew for sure.”

  A car crossed in front of them, looking for a parking spot. They watched it go by. When it was gone, she said, “You get your finder’s fee?”

  “No. Things started to fall apart right away. People were disappearing, getting whacked. Somebody would bug Jimmy for their share, and then a couple days later they’d vanish. I was smart, I kept my mouth shut. Except for Jimmy, just about everybody who touched that money got dead.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “Like I said, some of it got split up among the various bosses, passed around. Joey Dio got the biggest cut. There used to be a rule of thumb: For every million you steal, you sit on it one year. To be safe. But Joey took that to the extreme. He sat on it all for, like, thirty years.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “It’s the way he was. If he’d started spending that money, word would have gotten around, especially with the feds watching him all the time. He lived in the same house, on Staten Island, for forty years. Never spent anything that anybody could see. Some bosses, they would invest in a business, or put money out on the street. Joey never did any of that. He was too greedy.”

  “None of that’s proof the money’s still around.”

  “There’s a second part to the story.” He took his glasses off, wiped them with a tissue, adjusted them, worked them back over his ears. She waited.

  “Couple years ago, when I was still in the program, this FBI agent came out to see me. Young guy, too young to have been around back then, but all he wanted to talk about was Lufthansa. Said he was working with the DEA on a big case back east, and some bills had turned up they thought might be from the airport haul. Hundreds and fifties, old style, dates going back to the sixties, seventies. Money that should have been pulled from circulation long ago.”

  “Where did they find it?”

  “I couldn’t get a lot out of him, except it was a meth thing, biker gangs down in South Jersey, Philly. There was a big bust, and they seized a lot of cash and product. Some of those bills were mixed in with the money. But they didn’t get anywhere with it, so the whole thing ended there.”

  “You’re losing me,” she said.

  “This FBI guy thought, since I was on the G’s pad, I was everybody’s punch. He wanted me to come back east, help him connect the dots. That was the last thing I wanted to do. I had a life where I was, a good job. I was off the booze and the dope, working the steps. Getting my shit together for the first time in my life.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “The truth. That I didn’t know jack about biker gangs, or meth, or any of that stuff.”

  “What did you know?”

  He chewed his lip, didn’t answer.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “I’m putting myself in a jackpot here, aren’t I? I mean, if I tell you everything, then what do you need me for, right?”

  She was buying the story so far, wanted to hear more. But she needed to handle him carefully. He was skittish now, but she couldn’t give him the upper hand, let him think he was calling the shots on what to tell her, what to leave out.

  “What I’m thinking is, maybe this was all a mistake,” she said. She started the engine. “I’ll take you back to your car.”

  “Wait a minute. Can you blame me? I mean, you’re not even in yet, right?”

  She looked at him, waiting him out.

  “Okay, just hold on,” he said. “Shut the engine off.”

  She did. “You’ve got about thirty seconds to say something that makes sense.”

  “You know, if it wasn’t for Jimmy Peaches, I wouldn’t even be talking to…”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Take it easy. Yeah, I have an idea where that money is. But others will figure it out soon, too. Maybe they already have. We’d have to move fast.”

  “Tell it.”

  “Joey D was divorced. His wife caught him banging this woman was, like, eighteen years younger than him. He’d been on and off with this broad for years. Everybody knew about it. It was a big scandal, because the wife was the sister of a Gambino guy. Joey lost a lot of respect for that, almost got whacked himself.”

  “So?”

  “While he was waiting for the verdict to come in on his RICO case, he went on the lam. They finally nabbed him way up in North Jersey, a motel near the New York border, out in the woods, middle of nowhere. My guess is, that’s where he went when he knew they were closing in. To lead them away.”

  “From what?”

  “From where he’d really been hiding out.”

  “And you know where that was?” She heard far-off thunder.

  “Back in ’78,” he said, “right before Lufthansa, the Gent tells me Joey needs a favor, something out in Jersey. Wouldn’t say what. I drive all the way out there with Frankie Utrecht, another guy from our crew. Takes like three hours to get up there. Joey meets us at a bar in the middle of the sticks. Pickup trucks out front, gravel parking lot, you know? We stick out like nobody’s business. Turns out he’s having some issues with a construction company there, independent. They got no idea who Joey is, and they’re stalling on a project he’s got going. They’re building a house, but it’s taking too long, and the price keeps going up. Joey wants us to go, get them motivated, but not use his name.”

  “Why?”

  “He had his reasons. So we go talk to these people. Family-run business, you know? Been in the same place for fifty years. New York, that’s like another world to them. But they’re not trying to screw Joey, they’re just having problems getting all the materials he wants. So Frankie and I go out there, talk to them, and it gets settled. A month later, the house is finished, everybody’s happy.”

  “I thought you were done strong-arming by then.”

  “I was
. I went in there with a suitcase full of cash. Fifty grand went pretty far in those days. It let them know we were serious, and it also soothed their feathers. That was the easy way to do it.”

  “Whose money was it?”

  “It came from our crew. Joey never knew about it. I talked to the Gent, and he said, ‘Fuck it, go up there and straighten it out, tell me how much cash you need.’ It was a favor to Joey. Joey says he needs something, you do it. You don’t need to tell him how. He doesn’t want to know how the sausage gets made.”

  “What about the house?”

  “He had the girlfriend stashed there. House was in her name. It was a place he could go be with her, or stay if he needed to lam it. Jimmy told us to keep our mouths shut, not tell anyone what we’d done, where we’d gone. And I never did. Until right now.”

  “What about your pal Frankie?”

  “He went in on the airport thing. He was one of the first to get whacked. I started to panic because I could see what was happening. Now Joey and Jimmy had two reasons for wanting me dead. My finder’s fee—which they weren’t going to pay—and the house in Jersey, because now I was the only one who knew about it, besides them. I never got past high school, but you don’t need to be a genius to figure that one out.”

  “What was the girlfriend’s name?”

  “Brenda Scalise. At least that’s what she was using back then.”

  “She could be long gone.”

  “Maybe. But the motel where Joey was arrested was only about two miles from that house. And that was less than five years ago.”

  Rain began to spot the windshield.

  “You know the address?” she said.

  “Not the exact number. But it can’t be hard to find. I know the town.”

  “Did you meet her? Would you recognize her?”

  “Saw her once or twice. Once she was giving the builders some shit about the back deck, getting stain on the grass or something. As far as recognizing her, I don’t know. Maybe. That was a long time ago.”

  “A lot of maybes,” she said.

  “All fits together, though, don’t it?”

  “One thing I don’t understand.”

  “What?”

  “You.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You gave up the life years ago, right? Went straight, lived off the government.”