much out of your hands.”
Jack winced at her directness and all-too-familiar coolness.
“It’s a case for Homicide now,” Rebecca said. “It’s not so much a
matter for Narcotics any more.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of interdepartmental cooperation, for Christ’s
sake?” Nevetski demanded.
“Haven’t you ever heard of common courtesy?”
Rebecca asked.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Jack said quickly, placatingb.
“There’s room for all of us. Of course there is.”
Rebecca shot a malevolent look at him.
He pretended not to see it. He was very good at pretending not to see
the looks she gave him. He’d had a lot of practice at it.
To Nevetski, Rebecca said, “There’s no reason to leave the place like a
pig sty.”
“Vastagliano’s too dead to care,” Nevetski said.
“You’re just making it harder for Jack and me when we have to go through
all this stuff ourselves.”
“Listen,” Nevetski said, “I’m in a hurry. Besides, when I run a search
like this, there’s no fuckin’ reason for anyone else to double-check me.
I never miss anything.”
“You’ll have to excuse Roy,” Carl Blaine said, borrowing Jack’s
placating tone and gestures.
“Like hell,” Nevetski said.
“He doesn’t mean anything by it,” Blaine said.
“Like hell,” Nevetski said.
“He’s extraordinarily tense this morning,” Blaine said. In spite of his
brutal face, his voice was soft, cultured, mellifluous. “Extraordinarily
tense.”
“From the way he’s acting,” Rebecca said, “I thought maybe it was his
time of the month.”
Nevetski glowered at her.
There’s nothing so inspiring as police camaraderie, Jack thought.
Blaine said, “It’s just that we were conducting a tight surveillance on
Vastagliano when he was killed.”
“Couldn’t have been too tight,” Rebecca said.
“Happens to the best of us,” Jack said, wishing she’d shut up.
“Somehow,” Blaine said, “the killer got past us, both going in and
coming out. We didn’t get a glimpse of him.” , “Doesn’t make any
goddamned sense, ” Nevetski said, and he slammed a desk drawer with
savage force.
“We saw the Parker woman come in here around twenty past seven,” Blaine
said. “Fifteen minutes later, the first black-and-white pulled up. That
was the first we knew anything about Vastagliano being snuffed. It was
embarrasing. The captain won’t be easy on us.”
“Hell, the old man’ll have our balls for Christmas decorations.”
Blaine nodded agreement. “It’d help if we could find Vastagliano’s
business records, turn up the names of his associates, customers, maybe
collect enough evidence to make an important arrest.”
“We might even wind up heroes,” Nevetski said, “although right now I’d
settle for just getting my head above the shit line before I drown.”
Rebecca’s face was lined with disapproval of Nevetski’s incessant use of
obscenity.
Jack prayed she wouldn’t chastise Nevetski for his foul mouth.
She leaned against the wall beside what appeared to be (at least to
Jack’s unschooled eye) an original Andrew Wyeth oil painting. It was a
farm scene rendered in intricate and exquisite detail.
Apparently oblivious of the exceptional beauty of the painting, Rebecca
said, “So this Vincent Vastagliano was in the dope trade?”
“Does McDonald’s sell hamburgers?” Nevetski asked.
“He was a blood member of the Carramazza family, ” Blaine said.
Of the five mafia families that controlled gambling, prostitution, and
other rackets in New York, the Carramazzas were the most powerful.
“In fact,” Blaine said, “Vastagliano was the nephew of Gennaro
Carramazza himself. His uncle Gennaro gave him the Gucci route.”
“The what?” Jack asked.
“The uppercrust clientele in the dope business,” Blaine said. “The kind
of people who have twenty pairs of Gucci shoes in their closet.”
Nevetski said, “Vastagliano didn’t sell shit to school kids. His uncle
wouldn’t have let him do anything that seamy. Vince dealt strictly with
show business and society types. Highbrow muckety-mucks.”
“Not that Vince Vastagliano was one of them,” Blaine quickly added. “He
was just a cheap hood who moved in the right circles only because he
could provide the nose candy some of those limousine types were looking
for.”
“He was a scumbag,” Nevetski said. “This house, all those antiques-this
wasn’t him. This was just an image he thought he should project if he
was going to be the candyman to the jet set.”