Secrets Are the Things We Grew

Secrets Are the Things We Grew

by

Richard Russell

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Sangraal Books

on Smashwords

Secrets Are the Things We Grew

Copyright © 2009 by Sangraal, Inc.

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Flowers are the things we know

Secrets are the things we grow

Learn from us very much

Look at us but do not touch

Phaedra is my name

Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazelwood – Some Velvet Morning

The Eastern Front

Chapter One

So how come there aren’t any Swedish terrorists? said Kat, needling me as I finished up my piece on yet another PIRA bombing.

Because we invented it, got in and got out before anyone found a way to stop us.

What?

Where is your education? Ever heard of the Vikings?

That’s what you call terrorism?

We were better at it is all. Not only did we burn everything to the ground, we swiped everything of value and raped all the women before we left. That’s competence. These crazy Micks didn’t even get any before they faded into the woodwork.

Always wondered how some Italians ended up blonde.

You working today? I said, or are you just coming into the office to irritate your elders?

Actually I have to go to the Court of the Four Queens uptown. Maury is on a Cajun kick. One more plate of étouffée with too much cayenne and too little of everything else and I’m going frow up all over the office.

You giving any thought to going to Annandale? Both Dad and Joe Colson are on my ass about it.

Maybe this year, about Labor Day, maybe I’ll just stay there. I miss the vineyard, but I’m kind of a fifth wheel. You can’t really use two winemakers.

Eckersley wants to turn the greenhouses over to you, you know that. And he’s sixty-six. You’ll get a couple years under him and take over. That’s everybody’s plan. Unless you like reviewing.

"Actually, I don’t like it. But I do like living here. Who are my friends in Annandale? Dee and I end up Saturday night in Olivia’s, half the time we drag Helen along for a buffer, and the other half Dee is on assignment somewhere. I think Dee and I are the only people in Annandale who ever heard of Jean-Paul Sartre, and I even met him. Here I get into some great conversations, it’s like there was some reason to go to college. There, hell, if I want a drink at ten on Wednesday I have to stay home.

I know I have to go to work. But right now, I’m taking a vacation, and I like it.

You going alone tonight?

Granpa already grabbed the freebee. He likes Cajun, and you know he always stays in town Thursday night.

Kat is my adopted daughter. She was working at Confidential News and World Report where I was the foreign affairs editor as a reviewer. She wanted to be a winemaker, and that had been her ambition since she was thirteen, when my family bought back the family vineyard from a corporation who didn't understand wine, or how to make it. She even owned a small vineyard with her adopted brother. She was one of the first graduates of a specialized course in viniculture patterned after some French programs at Chico State.

Tori, my wife had insisted Kat try her hand at reviewing when she graduated. The publisher of Confidential, Harold Reilly, who Kat referred to as granpa had engineered her adoption, almost the day she showed up the Confidential offices in San Francisco, a frightened thirteen year old prostitute, and he supported Tori to the hilt. He decided that Kat needed some finishing before taking up the rural life of Annandale.

Tori and I grew up in Annandale, a small agricultural town between Napa and the Lakes in the coast mountains of California. Tori and her brother Ted were orphans, though Tori fresh out of college adopted Ted as a teenager to keep him out of foster care. My parents, after half a dozen years of retirement in San Diego, bought back the family farm on the proviso that Hal Ericson, a neighboring vintner, ran the vineyards and my Dad took over the winery.

Tori had taken out some kielbasa from White Eagle, and ordered latkes from Sarge’s to pick up on the way home, so my plan to sneak a free meal with Kat and Harold was scuttled. I had a nagging premonition but buried it. As it turned out, perhaps I shouldn’t have.

The capos of the five New York Mafia families were awaiting trial. They had been arrested, but were all out on big money bail. Harold considered it a major victory in that he had championed using RICO against the New York crime families for more than a decade. His constant campaigning for this had a major effect.

Rudy Martinelli was Republican, which should have turned Harold off to beat the band. Harold was a New England liberal with a vengeance. But Rudy’d gotten two feature stories in the past year. I had actually kidded Harold about both. But Harold viewed the cosa nostra as a parasite that needed purging. My own view was a bit different. Organized crime is often a societal matter. Most of Johnny Shao and the Heaven and Earth societies, popularly called the triads or tongs, took care of cultural needs within a group that was on the outside looking in. I had dealt with Heaven and Earth over the years and recognized their value. Yes, the need for it among Sicilians had passed and the mafia, la cosa nostra was more a cultural affectation, but they had amassed a great deal of raw power, less than the triads, for example, that legitimately ran the local government of Taiwan, but power none the less. Perhaps it needed curbing. However, as I had dealt with it in Brooklyn, it was more of a plus than a minus.

In a free market, especially one dealing in contraband of any type, new markets are constantly being pursued. If the contraband is drugs, the lack of control in a free market has the drugs being expanded into schools, to children. In short any market needs control or it becomes dangerous. In illegal goods and services control by an organization is preferable to the free market.

Tori and I finished dinner and I was reading while she was watching T. V. when a bulletin surprised both of us. The media was reporting that Rudy Martinelli’s dinner party, which included publisher Harold Reilly had been fired upon at the Court of the Four Queens Restaurant on the upper Eastside.

Tori and I both kept our cars in California, so I jumped on the phone and got Mary Ann at Miguel’s, the local car service and hired a car for the night.

Nick? said Tony, the Italian kid I asked for first, All night? You don’t do that.

Kat was shot at on the upper Eastside Tony. Tonight, all night and until I don’t need you.

And even more. She takes me more than you. And sometimes she does all night. She okay?

As far as we know, you know the Court of the Four Queens?

Second and eighty-one. You pay for tickets?

And tolls.

Tony made Tori nervous, she said he drove with his dick and not his head, still, if you need to get someplace fast, in New York City, a good Brooklyn gypsy cab driver is the only way to beat the subway.

What do you know? said Tony as he pulled onto the Eastside drive from the bridge, giving him his first break from crawling up everyone’s trunk and honking.

Not much, answered Tori. Kat’s reviewing the Four Queens, Harold’s staying to go with her and they must have run into Martinelli.

Big Pauly, said Tony. He’s got a mad out on your boss. I even heard. Russo said to lay off, but Paul is getting too big. Brooklyn don’t count no more.

So you’re with Russo? I said.

Hey, John watches out for us, Big Pauly don’t.

What are you into that you need a crook watching out for you?

Nothing Nick, honest.

Tori spoke in Italian. You’re an honest man Tony, and a good one. We needed you; we called you. If Paul DelVecchio is behind this, I’ll shoot him. Or maybe I’ll just cut off his balls and nail them to your cab. Now it’s a called an accelerator, it’s under your right foot, shut up and drive.

In Annandale we were Scandinavian, or Italian, at least when we were growing up. The Scandinavians lost their language, the Italians didn't and Tori's maiden name was Raselli. As a foreign affairs editor, and Tori as my researcher we all got along in about a dozen languages each, courtesy of Berlitz three evenings a week.

Tony, like most Italian gypsy cab drivers do, crawled up everyone’s trunk to get us there. Tori knew Italian men, despite their macho front, they were more afraid of women than of men. Of course he was dealing with one of the best of breed. Harold, a New England WASP backed off from Tori when she was in storm mode, as far as I could see very few men didn’t. Her chick, her little sister was threatened. If God did that, he was in trouble.

Tori headed for Kat when we bullied our way through the police line. I showed up in her wake more than with her. By the time I’d gotten half the story from Harold, Tori had us together and was ordering Carl, the junior partner roused out of bed from the magazine’s legal firm around. It helped that George Pappas, the husband of Gwen Pappas, Harold's adopted daughter, and an assistant police chief showed up about the same time we did.

When, eight hours after, with massive legal help, we reached the loft on Atlantic, we had a surprise waiting.

Ken Holder was pacing the sidewalk.

Ken was a two thousand a day bodyguard. There were few if any more expensive.

I'd known Ken in Vietnam. About ten years earlier I'd needed a bodyguard. Gwen found Ken mowing lawns in Reseda.

He found Kat in the back seat. She spoke first.

Kenny? What are you doing here?

Your aunt called, said Ken. I’m protecting you.

To Kat, about everyone was an aunt or an uncle. Aunt Gwen? Aunt Jo?

Kat accepted it. I didn’t but I did accept Ken, pretty much immediately. Kat and Ken were, well, Kat and Ken. They were an article to give Freud a headache. Kat, who hadn’t a clue who her father was, cast me in the role. Ken and I acted somewhat alike. So Ken was, well, Kat’s Freudian, Electra miracle man. Ken, on his part, was fascinated with Kat, ever since he guarded her when she was seventeen.

I told Tony he was on call, and get some sleep, then I got everyone in the loft and took Ken aside.

Why are you here? Kat’s got more aunts than she needs but I know damn well no one called a west coast agency.

I picked it up on the T.V. Okay?

Tori walked over when she saw the two of us talking. You didn’t call, you just came?

I saw Kat when they flashed the bulletin on T.V. and went straight to the airport.

We’re not even sure who the target was. Martinelli’s bodyguards didn’t leave anything to question, I said. Tony gave us the word on the street here in Brooklyn that DelVecchio has it out for Harold, for what that’s worth.

Isn’t DelVecchio in jail? said Ken.

I think he’s out on something like three million bail, answered Tori.

I doubt it makes a difference in or out. Genovese ran things from behind prison walls, I added. The question on my mind is whether we’re in danger or Martinelli is?

If it’s DelVecchio, said Ken, I think Harold is probably the target. I get thrown together with wise guys occasionally when I guard a fighter. Big Pauly has a reputation of being somewhat vindictive and carrying grudges. He supposedly had his daughter’s boyfriend killed for saying he looked like Frank Perdue. I take most of it with a grain of salt. Up close these aren’t tough guys. Half come off as a bad Brando imitation, still, I’ve heard enough about DelVecchio to give it some credence. Also he doesn’t use Italians as his button men. If the two gunmen tonight looked Irish it’s pretty much a lock that it’s DelVecchio. He has an alliance with Paddy C and the Westies in Hell’s Kitchen. On a hit like this it’d take some crazy Irishman, and Big Pauly would use them rather than telegraph a mafia hit while he was under indictment.

I called Kat over.

Did the gunmen look Irish or Italian Princess?

You know, said Kat, it’s sort of funny, but after you kidded me today about the Irish as terrorists, the first thought that crossed my mind when I saw them with their guns out is that they’re incompetent terrorists who won’t get any. Irish daddy.

Tori, you find out tomorrow, you and Gwen. Ken you stay on Kat, I’m going to get another guard and some information. The rest of you, bed, it’s after five, we’ve only got a couple hours.

Chapter Two

I walked over to the bar and into the cellar behind it. I took a split of decent Bordeaux and walked out and sat down. I poured all of it into a balloon glass and tried to assess what I knew.

Harold had come down pretty hard on DelVecchio. If he was the type to hold and nurse a grudge, failure wouldn't stop him. The problem was that I had a much better handle on foreign crime than American. The mafiosa I'd met in America seemed to me little more than comic opera figures. I didn't take them seriously, never had, and now it was being forced on me. I couldn't allow them to shoot at my family. The question was how to stop them. Obviously if someone under indictment was shooting at you, the law wasn't going to provide a lot of help.

The first idea that came to me was a variation of the old saw. Set a thief to catch a thief. But then Cervantes had it as set a fool to catch a fool.

I had an idea and followed it. I called a number in Hong Kong and got Jerry Chin.

About five years before I’d chased a Vietnamese rival of the Heaven and Earth Society out of the U. S. I’d been given a gold coin to do it, which I didn’t use, and another when I did it. With Jerry Chin and Ken Holder, I had the two best bodyguards in the world, using the coin. A coin would also give me a temporary say in the world’s opium traffic. Not much, but enough to get inside the dealers who were with the mafia to force a meeting. Faced with one criminal organization, I decided to appeal to another.

Nick? he said after I told him who I was, what’d you need.

You on a plane to New York. I’ll clear it with Johnny. I’m going to use a coin, and you as my bodyguard is part of the package.

"Packing, leaving, your loft in Brooklyn?

Do I get a clue?

As near as I can figure DelVecchio and the Carpaccios shot at Harold and Kat.

That’s enough, on my way. Holder coming?

He’s here.

My next call was still Hong Kong, Tommy Ma, the narcobusinessman in charge of the golden triangle.

What you need me for Nicky? Another story or information?

I need to know the mafiosa you supply in New York.

You’re kidding. That’s not something you tell a reporter.

Basically you won't be telling a reporter Tommy. You'll be telling me. Paul DelVecchio shot at my boss, who was eating dinner with my daughter this evening.

Uh Oh.

And what I need is enough of an wedge to open up the mafia here. Since all five of their poobahs are under indictment, I rather doubt the government is going to be much of a help. And since drugs here are pretty much of an open secret here, about all I'd get publishing what you tell me is a lawsuit.

DelVecchio has an automatic hit on anyone dealing powder Nicky.

Don’t fuck with me Tommy, I’m not in the mood and I’m using a coin from Heaven and Earth in the next day or so.

It doesn’t get out?

Like I just told you, it’s personal, and really I don’t expect the big boys can get hung by it.

The Russo brothers in Brooklyn. Johnny will know the particulars.

If I use the coin, how long can I starve them?

Right now? I’ll go three months.

You’ll back that up if I need it?

Hell, you’re just giving me an excuse to raise the price.

I used a yoga technique to go to sleep and wake up on time. I usually used it on planes. At nine I was