Fashionably Late (For My Funeral) Pt. 04

"Any evidence that they have will disappear before they can act on it, we have made sure of that."

"No, this isn't going through the normal procedures. This Captain Ruiz has it all in his office and I hear that if the DA won't support him he's taking it straight to the Governor."

"Ruiz. That bastard should have backed off when we cut his wife. Where is this evidence coming from?"

"I'm not sure, all I know is that it isn't part of a police investigation but they are following up on what they have already. There are cops running around the place bringing guys in from everywhere. The cells are full and the place is crawling with lawyers trying to get to their clients. The official story is that they are helping with enquiries."

"How do you know that these raids are connected with us?"

"One of the first people brought in was the captain of the Enterprise Endeavour. He has been charged over the importation of the shipment of Cocaine. The Miami police want him as well. The NYPD arrested him as he returned to the ship with an attaché case full of money that had been marked in some way and came from a kidnapping in LA."

"That money was clean."

"No it wasn't. Whoever paid him that money is no longer a friend. The captain is spilling his guts hoping to plea bargain his way into a lighter sentence. He has said that if he goes down everyone else goes down with him."

"My guess is that it's Feldham, the bastard. I bet it is him that is providing the evidence. I wonder where he is?" Money changed hands and the man left.

I hastily stripped the film from the camera, the tape from the recorder and packed them into the envelope along with a note to Ruiz telling him that I was out of there and would contact him when I could. I wished him luck and suggested that Phoebe should be moved away to a safe place immediately. I also asked if he could get a message to Sendi asking, no telling, her to be very careful.

***

In Paulo's office things were beginning to get interesting. "You had better start covering your arse, the captain of that ship is under arrest and is spilling his guts as we speak."

"How do you know this?"

"Our friend from the DEA has heard about it on the police grapevine, he came here wanting out of the operation. He's running scared and I think we should take care of him before the cops get to him."

"I'll see to it. Now what else did he tell you?"

"The cops have been busy dragging people in to the police station and questioning them. They haven't charged any of them yet and they are keeping their lawyers away from them. I think they might be trying to cut a deal with them to squeal on us."

"How did this happen? I thought we had our backs covered?"

"It must be that writer Feldham, you know the guy that wanted his money back from Craigmore, the guy whose wife Craigmore was fucking. I said that your goons went a little too far with him. Anyway the money that we gave the ship's captain was marked in some way that we didn't notice and he was picked up before he could get it to the ship and safety. They have him cold, and if they have him they will most likely be moving on us. I'm moving any incriminating files out of my office and I'm getting lost for a while. I hate to tell you this but for the time being you're on your own."

***

I packed my camera into the carry case and left the building via the rear exit. I had the Porsche parked in the laneway at the rear. I loaded the camera bag into the trunk and walked across the road. Pushing my way into Paulo's office I walked over to the computer desk. He watched in amazement as I flicked through the floppy disks until I came across the back-up copy of his accounts. "I think this will do. The police are on their way so I suggest that your best bet will be to tell them as much as you can. They have other witnesses who are giving them enough information to incriminate all of you so if you bullshit them they will know." I put the disk into my pocket and left him still with his mouth open.

I drove back to my hotel. Thinking ahead, I didn't park at the hotel but a block and a half away in a parking station.

***

Costanzo was starting to panic. He was no longer imitating Marlon Brando's Godfather but was doing a creditable imitation of someone who had lost his grip on life. No longer was the cigar in his mouth, instead he used it to emphasize the point he was making, stabbing the air with it.

He called for his lieutenant. "Rocco, I want for you to find this Feldham guy and put him out of business, permanently. Then, when you have done that I want you to go over and pay a visit on that whore Phoebe, only this time don't cut her up. This time you should let Luigi have his way before you dispose of her as a lesson to that cop husband of hers. Now get out of here and don't come back here until this job is done."

He picked up the phone and dialed a number. "It's me, what are you doing to me? I hear that this gung-ho cop of yours has gotten himself a lot of incriminating evidence and that he plans to go to the Governor with it."

The man who was on the receiving end of the line, sat bolt upright in his leather chair. "What! I thought that he'd given up on this. I told his station commander that we would never get enough solid evidence to get to court. I ordered them to drop the investigation."

"Well he's got the captain of the ship and he's squealing like a stuck pig. If you want continued contributions for your campaign funds you'd better do something about this and fast!"

"Leave it to me." The District Attorney was on his feet and walking as fast as he could to the Police Commissioner's office. He was thinking as he went. For years he had relied on the money that Guido Costanzo had contributed to his campaign funds and to other worthwhile causes like his retirement fund. He had turned a blind eye to the source of those funds, he had to ever since Guido approached him with photographs of him with a prostitute. His wife, who came from one of the oldest and most respected families would never have understood that his needs were stronger than hers and that he was merely satisfying those needs.

Perry Markham had long ago rationalized that, if as rumored, it was alright for J Edgar Hoover to turn a blind eye to organized crime to prevent his cross dressing and homosexual activities becoming public knowledge then it followed that it was alright for him to do the same.

He had been a competent enough student at law school but wasn't sufficiently well connected to gain a place with one of the establishment law firms so had to settle for a job with the DA's office. He worked solidly but not spectacularly for many years before the opportunity for advancement presented itself to him.

A prominent public figure had been caught up in a raid on one of Guido's establishments and had, in return for the loss of evidence, introduced Perry to his daughter who was on the rebound from a messy divorce and looking for another man.

Realizing an opportunity when it presented itself, Perry courted the rather unlovely Felicity Jamieson. Rather unlovely was Perry's description of her, to her family she was beautiful in a fragile way. She had been unlucky in her first marriage to Clement Jamieson Junior, the wealthy son of a wealthy family, who, on his return from their honeymoon, proceeded to gamble away his fortune and as much of hers as he could get his hands on.

The divorce was a messy one in which he claimed that the marriage was never consummated and that she was a lesbian and unable or unwilling to share the matrimonial bed with him. She countered with the allegation that her unwillingness stemmed from his bizarre sexual perversions.

Perry had been a thoughtful suitor and had not pushed her into sex, he had little need to do so to satisfy his needs because they were being satisfied elsewhere. They had married and his professional star commenced its meteoric rise until he found himself in the DA's chair and Guido's clutches.

That was the start of a long association that had been a very profitable one for him. He was almost in the position where he could at long last get rid of the frigid bitch that he married and set himself up with someone more amenable to his sexual needs. He had been repatriating the money to a bank in the Cayman Islands, out of reach of the IRS and her lawyers. I could, he thought, move to the Caymans and live in luxury there for a fraction of what it would cost him in New York. His mind started to choose his companion from the many easy women that had taken his fancy in Guido's establishments.

Pushing his way past the Commissioner's startled secretary he stormed into the office. "What the hell is Ruiz playing at?"

"What do you mean?" The Commissioner sat calmly behind his desk.

"He is pulling a whole lot of people in off the streets for questioning. If this has anything to do with this idea he's had about a huge shipment of drugs coming into this country I want him taken off the case. I've told him hundreds of times that this is out of our jurisdiction and that we would never be able to make any evidence that he could get stick in court. What has he got?"

"Marked money, the captain of the ship had in his possession, and he has a whole mess of photographic and recorded evidence of drug transactions taking place. Now this evidence will stand up in court and we are going to use it to prosecute everyone connected with this operation and that will probably include those that put up the money to bring the drugs into the country."

"How do you hope to get that sort of evidence?"

"We have just arrested the man who was in charge of all of the financial transactions. Now we believe that there were some high profile people who invested in this enterprise and they had better see to it that they have good lawyers or they could be looking at ten to twenty years inside. He was attempting to remove some files when we arrested him. Now before you ask, yes we had a warrant for his arrest as well as one that enabled us to carry out a thorough search of his office, we weren't relying on probable cause."

The DA went very quiet and left, that is he tried to leave, his exit was barred by two large and formidable policemen. "I'm sorry but I can't let you go. I'm arresting you on a charge of attempting to pervert the cause of justice. Read him his rights and book him. He has one phone call and that had better be to his lawyer."

Guido was just getting the impression that he had regained some sort of control over his world, he had men scouring the city for me, his friend the DA was taking care of the police side of things, what more could go wrong?

Three suits walked into his office followed by one of the waitresses. "I'm sorry Mr. Costanzo I tried to stop them."

Guido was about to say something when the leader of the group beat him to the punch. "You aren't coping very well are you?"

"What do you mean? Who are you?"

"What I mean is that you have half the population of New York running around like blue arsed flies looking under rocks for someone who is probably right under your very nose. You have the other half running around looking for someone who isn't around the place, she's gone, out of sight, and you'll never find her. As to who we are, let us just say that apart from money from operations such as yours the taxpayer pays our wages."

"What am I supposed to do, I've got a lot of money riding on this and it looks as if I'll lose the lot, all because of the Feldham bastard."

"And who's to blame for that?"

"What do you mean?"

"He asked for his money back and instead of giving it back to him and coming to us for more you cook up some sort of deal with Craigmore to give him the money and steal it back. When Feldham outsmarted you, and that wasn't real hard, you beat him up to try and find out where the money was. Now Feldham outsmarts you again by having you believe that Craigmore had double-crossed you. So what do you do? You send a couple of very unsubtle thugs over to rape and kill Feldham's wife and kill Craigmore. What did that achieve? I'll tell you what it achieved. It achieved making a smart person very mad, and looking for revenge which ended up placing the whole operation in danger."

"But how was I to know that this Feldham would react the way that he has?"

"You didn't know because you didn't think. Now I want you to call off your goons and leave Feldham to us."

"What will you do?"

"When we find him we eliminate him, permanently. And when we do this we will send a message out to the world at large that it will not be safe for anyone to fuck up any operation that we're involved in. It will be spectacular. Have you ever heard of a 'French Kiss?'"

"Yeah I tried one on a girlfriend once when I was young and she slapped my face."

"This particular version is a little thing that we've developed. Do you remember seeing footage of the destruction caused by napalm during the Vietnam War? Well the devious little men in our organization decided to experiment with adding an ignition source and white phosphorous to the mix. This mixture of a small amount of plastic explosive as an ignition source, napalm and phosphorous, when it blows there will be carnage in the streets."

"A little over the top isn't it?"

"The decision is ours to make and we have made it, Feldham and anyone associated with him will be taught a lesson."

Phoebe left to stay with her mother several hours before a fire bomb tore through their apartment destroying it and the adjacent apartments totally.

As investigators sifted through the burnt out shell of the building looking for clues and remains they reluctantly reached the conclusion that neither would be found.

"Have you ever seen anything like this?"

"Once, a couple of years ago, I was out on a practice range."

"What do you mean, a practice range, we have never had anything like this."

"I had a brother once, he was a Navy SEAL. He took me to a range where I saw something that could cause this sort of devastation, he asked me if we could cope with a blaze of that intensity. I had to say that we'd have a snowball's chance in hell. What he told me next scared me."

"What was that?"

"That it was something that was developed by a government agency. I thought that they were developing something that they could use in another war if necessary but he told me that they had developed it for use by a government agency for use in its covert operations. There are two versions, both deadly, they can be timed to burn quickly or slowly, either way the heat is intense. One version, used to spread fire over a wide area is the white phosphorous version, it uses C4 as a trigger and dispersant. The other uses thermite to confine the blast and the very intense heat. It can liquefy steel, so you can imagine its potential. But there is another wrinkle to these devices, they suck oxygen into the fire core from the surrounding area, anyone in that area will not be able to breathe."

"You mean the CIA thought this up?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny that, if you get my drift?"

"Then how come it was used here?"

"I didn't say that it was this stuff, I just said that it had the same effect."

"If we can't find any bodies here we'll just have to try and find a list of who lives here and see if there is any reasonable way that we can tie this in to the bombing."

Sometime later Ruiz was interviewed by the investigators. He had been expecting the visit since he had heard that his apartment building had been fire-bombed.

"Was anyone in your apartment at the time of the blast?"

"No, I have spoken to my wife and she wasn't at home at the time."

"Do you have any idea why anyone would target your apartment?"

"I suppose that it could have some connection with the case that I'm working on at present."

"And what is that?"

"We have been investigating a couple of murders that may be connected with the importation and distribution of cocaine."

"Shit that'll do it. Do you realize that if you start in on these guys they will cut you to shreds and feed you to the sharks. I hate to tell you this but you may just be in way over your head."

"That's what I've been told, but I've got too much riding on this to stop now."

"You know that you could be dealing with the firm, don't you?"

"You mean the spooks from Langley?"

"Yes."

"Fuck! I knew that they had set up a huge operation working in the Golden Triangle but I thought that they were working to stop the trade from Colombia."

"I could say that it's exactly like when they were supposed to be working towards stopping the heroin trafficking out of South East Asia."

"Fuck!"

"You've already said that."

"I know. I've got something to do. I have to find someone and tell him to get the hell out of town and fast."

Guido had located where I was staying through a contact in the 5th precinct.

"We've found Feldham!"

"Where is he?"

"He's staying at this hotel. We don't know if he's actually there so we have someone watching both entrances. We have people looking out for his car because that isn't in the hotel garage."

The phone rang. "Speak to me." The voice on the other end of the phone spoke.

"We've found his car and it looks as if he left it in a parking garage and walked to his hotel. It also looks as if someone else is interested in his car."

"Leave them to it, just stick around the hotel and make sure that he leaves, don't follow him because when the shit hits the fan I don't want any of you anywhere near it, It is out of our control now and is going to get very messy."

His men watching the hotel missed me as I left to walk to the car. They saw but didn't recognize me with my changed appearance. I was no longer the studious nerd that I had become over the last few weeks, instead I was the young trendy person in designer clothes, clean shaven and sporting a colorful bandanna. I took a circuitous route to ensure that I wasn't followed so it took me some time to arrive at where I had parked.

The other men had done their work on the car and left, they didn't want to be anywhere near it when I returned. There was no-one watching me as I walked toward the car and no-one watching the car.

I was still a long way from it when I noticed a man standing beside it. He had what looked to be a long flat piece of plastic that he was feeding down inside the door. It looked as if I was going to be Porsche-less. He scrambled inside and fiddled with the ignition. Within ten seconds he backed out of the parking space and accelerated rapidly down the ramp to the exit. Within another thirty seconds the car stopped rolling as it was engulfed in a fireball that lifted it several feet from the ground before crashing back to earth a fiery mass of twisted metal.

The Porsche had just crashed through the boom gate and was turning on to the street when the bomb exploded. The fireball engulfed everyone and everything within a radius of fifty feet, people were alight, clothes burning as they writhed on the ground.

I walked out of the pedestrian entrance to the parking garage to be confronted by chaos. I had seen similar images from the Vietnam War and it turned my stomach then, just as it did now. There were screams from the injured and just plain frightened, people running to the aid of the injured and chaos everywhere.

I decided that it was time that I wasn't anywhere to be seen and in the confusion I walked away from what was meant to be the end of my present life into my future life, whatever that was.