Stefanovitch forced himself to dwell on the Midnight Club the rest of the way back to Manhattan. The horrible screams he had heard in Atlantic City became background noise for the long ride home.
Who had ordered the massacre? What had happened to the Midnight Club?
Those were the questions he had to answer. That was the maddening puzzle he still seemed no closer to solving.
PART THREE
The Midnight Club
59
Kennedy International Airport; Six A.M.
EVERYTHING THAT COULD change changed at six o’clock on the morning of July 11, a Monday.
All that had transpired since the first murders at Allure was suddenly redefined for everyone, especially the public, who would hear and greedily read about the new twists and turns the following morning at the latest.
The passenger tunnel inside the Air France terminal at Kennedy Airport was thickly carpeted, camouflaged in bright vermilion and blue. It was luxurious by most airport standards, reminiscent of the nouveau riche travelers it served. The long corridor was all serenity as it filled with well-dressed passengers exiting from the Concorde. The two-hour-and-fifty-minute flight from Paris had been a thing of perfection.
Among the final passengers to deboard the crowded jetliner was one who couldn’t possibly be on the flight…
Alexandre St.-Germain exited the plane.
The Grave Dancer was very much alive.
His dress was elegant, befitting his businessman image. A beige suit and salmon shirt were hand-tailored; his black half boots were soft Italian leather, as was the briefcase he carried. St-Germain’s face was deeply sun-bronzed, his wavy blond hair meticulously combed back. Nor did his eyes betray any physical or emotional discomfort. They were dark, shiny stones that gave away nothing of what went on behind them.
A black Bell helicopter with gold racing stripes was waiting for him at the New York airport. He had to stoop low as he climbed into the close quarters of the cockpit. His eyes rapidly brushed over the repository of glass and shiny metal instruments inside the plane.
He encountered Jimmy Burke of the New York Police Department, who occupied the far left corner of the copter. St.-Germain smiled knowingly, his head cocked slightly to the side.
“Hello, Jimmy B. I’m back safe and sound. Did you miss me?”
As the shimmering helicopter made its way out of the early morning airport maze, the two men talked for the first time in several days.
“I don’t believe Atlantic City could have gone any better,” Burke was characteristically enthusiastic. He had developed a disarming smile and manner as a promising wise guy in the East New York section of Brooklyn. Like many of the local hoods, he had fulfilled his patriotic duty by joining the army in the late 1960s. He’d met Alexandre St.-Germain in South Vietnam and immediately begun to smuggle and sell narcotics for the Grave Dancer.
St.-Germain returned the easy, predatory smile. “The old bosses, the ones who were never able to learn the new ways, are gone. The way is clear for necessary change. A new order has emerged. Not only in New York, but in Rome, Paris, London, Tokyo.”
Burke nodded. “Everyone who matters is blaming the vigilante policemen, the so-called death wish squad. One reason is that the death squads actually existed in the New York Police Department long before this. I told you about the squads. Once that was leaked to the newspapers, everything else followed smoothly.”
“Yes, the media can be very accommodating. What about the others who were involved? The detectives. Rodriquez and Parker?”
Burke answered without revealing the trepidation he suddenly felt. He had prepared himself for the expected question, but not for the intensity in Alexandre St.-Germain’s eyes.
“One of them is dead. Aurelio Rodriquez was taken care of in Atlantic City. Parker is a little bit of a problem. Parker escaped.”
“What do you mean, he escaped?”
Alexandre St-.Germain’s eyes had become dark beads. His nose flared, so that momentarily the handsome face was almost hideous, a much older man’s profile.
“Parker got out of Atlantic City. He’s acting as if none of it happened. He hasn’t even tried to contact me.”
“So the affair in Atlantic City could have gone better,” St.-Germain said, his chin jutting menacingly. “Well, I suppose it’s not important. It’s nothing we want to deal with at this time. For the moment at least, let it be. Let Mr. Parker be.”
60
THAT AFTERNOON ALEXANDRE St.-Germain’s yacht cut through a light chop about thirty miles off City Island. A comfortable breeze streamed across the deck, where St.-Germain met with Cesar and Rafael Montoya, powerful drug underbosses from Colombia.
The music of U2 played somewhere on the yacht. Revolutionary claptrap. Bono grieving for Ireland and other lost causes.
Both of the Montoyas were impressed with the style and demeanor of the Grave Dancer. Neither of them would show it, however. They were the sons of one of the men killed in Atlantic City, but there was no problem there. They had agreed to set their own father up. The meeting this afternoon was to divide the spoils in South America, to move forward with the business of the new Club.
Alexandre St.-Germain took Porsche sunglasses from his shirt pocket and slipped them on. “So how is everything in Bogotá?” he asked the Montoyas.
“Como siempre,” said Rafael. “I told you months ago, my father doesn’t matter anymore. My father was nothing to anyone who matters.” Rafael Montoya had been educated at the University of Miami, but mostly he had learned in the jungles and mountains of his homeland. Rafael was twenty-six, one year older than his brother.
Something about the meeting caused St.-Germain to smile. “You know, the world is now run by men like us,” he said. “Maybe it always was.”
“And what kind of men are we?” asked Rafael, who had been enrolled as a philosophy major at Miami.
“Psychopaths.” Alexandre St.-Germain shrugged and his smile broadened. “No one understands us. They can’t put themselves in the minds of men who act without a conscience. They try to understand, but they can’t.”
“I have a family.” Cesar Montoya spoke now. He had a pouty baby’s face that reflected his soul. “I have plenty of conscience. More than I need.”
St.-Germain calmly took a shrimp from the platter set before them. “You think so. Well, that’s good, Cesar. Myself, I have no family, no attachments. I have only myself to be concerned about. You know, I even enjoy wet work. Wet contracts. I understand who I am. I am a monster. I was an assassin when I was twenty years old. Psychopath? Do you know that word? Psicopata?”
The brothers looked at one another, and then both bearded men laughed. This afternoon, each was wearing a white linen suit with leather sandals. The sandals alone cost more than the average yearly wage in their country.
“It is a time of great change,” Alexandre St.-Germain went on. Although he was speaking to the brothers, he seemed to be staring through them. They might as well not have been there.
“For the past five years, we have been planning everything so carefully. There was very little bloodshed until Atlantic City. The other members, the bankers, the politicians, they don’t like killing. They prefer the courts. In New York, in Rome, London, the Far East, in Bogotá, information was mysteriously made available to ambitious district attorneys and other prosecutors. The traditional ranks of the syndicates were thinned out in this efficient manner. Do you see what I’m saying? Then came Atlantic City. Years of work were consummated in a few moments. The old crime empire was eliminated. And now, a completely new breed exists. Here’s to better business for us all.”
Rafael Montoya raised his glass of white wine. “Congratulations on your victory.”
“Our victory,” said the host, still seeming to look through the skulls of the two Colombian drug lords.
The Montoyas smiled again, and seemed relieved by the last pronouncement. “Our victory.” So, they were getting their father’s territory a
fter all. The Midnight Club had made its decision.
St.-Germain gave the two brothers lunch, and they talked very serious business for the next hour or so. He was curious about their future plans, the future of the South American drug business. Suddenly, he seemed to want to know everything from them.
As he listened, he was thinking that Rafael and Cesar Montoya were the worst kind of sociopaths, the most dangerous of all. The brothers were bloodthirsty animals, yet they thought of themselves as family men. They had helped him plan the death of their own father; and ironically, their father had helped him plan this afternoon as well.
Wet work. Yes, he did enjoy it. Shattering the most sacred taboos was sport for him. His only true release. Psicopata.
The gun concealed in Alexandre St.-Germain’s waistband was small, less than ninety millimeters. It was over almost before it had begun. Two head shots fired on the deck of the luxury yacht. Both Montoyas dead. Perfect execution of the street law.
They were too uncontrollable to run South America, even Colombia. Their father had known that. Alexandre St.-Germain knew it as well.
They were old-style gangsters, not businessmen. They had no place in the future of the Midnight Club, the new Club.
61
John Stefanovitch; One Police Plaza
JOHN STEFANOVITCH HAD always tried to embrace life; to accept the good with the bad. Because of his philosophy, he often had the sense that he was racing, trying to cram enough life into too short a time span.
He had slept only two hours the previous night. At four in the morning, he woke rigid and sweating. He spent the better part of an hour crouched behind a darkened apartment window overlooking Second Avenue—thinking, plotting, getting more lost and confused than he had been in a couple of years.
He still didn’t understand what had happened in Atlantic City. How could they have been so close to Trump’s, and failed to stop the killings?
The Midnight Club? Who actually controlled it, if it wasn’t the crime bosses themselves? Who had ordered the shootings at Trump’s?
Then there was the matter of Sarah McGinniss. In some ways, Sarah was the most difficult and troubling problem. Why had he run away from her down in Pennsylvania? Because he was afraid she might be playing with him? No, that wasn’t really true… Because deep inside he felt inadequate, unworthy of her? That was definitely closer to the mark. That was so close it hurt Stefanovitch to consider it.
It just couldn’t work. They couldn’t work. Stefanovitch was as sure of it as he was that the realization was one of the most painful of his life.
The sixth floor inside Police Plaza was choked with activity at nine in the morning. Like the seventh and eighth floors, the sixth was subdivided into departments. Outer offices were partitioned by enameled steel wall units to create compact but at least windowed offices. Each was large enough for a small sofa, work desk, and a chair or two. Stefanovitch wheeled past his own office, without bothering to look inside.
He was a few minutes late arriving at the commissioner’s briefing. Captain Donald Moran was delivering a postmortem on Atlantic City. Two dozen high-ranking cops were huddled around, listening. They were mostly stone-faced, looking about as awful as Stefanovitch felt.
“Vincent Poppo died this morning. That’s seventeen dead in Atlantic City. Santo Striga and Sammy Chum aren’t expected to live. Despite the allegations in the newspapers, no one’s been able to identify the hit men at Trump’s. This police vigilante thing in the papers is total bullshit. We don’t know why Aurelio Rodriquez was in Atlantic City. It’s possible he was part of the team that hit Trump’s, but not as a cop.”
Stefanovitch didn’t want to, but he also got the opportunity to speak to the group about the investigation.
“I don’t have a lot to tell,” he said. “We’re trying to cooperate with the FBI, and the Atlantic City police force. They’re doing hotel-by-hotel checks up and down the boardwalk. There are special detective teams operating in Newark, Philadelphia, Miami, here in New York.”
Stefanovitch raised his hands palms up. He felt burned out, frustrated, and he knew it showed. What he wasn’t telling the others was that the FBI and the local police had tied his hands in Atlantic City. They were playing jurisdictional games, which was why he’d left Atlantic City on Saturday night. The questions in his mind were: Why had the travesty down there been allowed to happen? Why was the N.Y.P.D. being pulled back from the manhunt at this time? It was one more thing that didn’t make sense.
Herbert Windfield, Stefanovitch’s captain, got to speak next. “We’re pretty sure whoever hit Trump’s knew we were right there at the Tropicana,” he began. “One of the hitters closed the drapes before the shooting started. Coincidence, right? So we have no videotapes of the shooting. The recordings show that none of the hitters said anything once they were inside. Another coincidence? On the tapes, there’s shouting from the mob bosses, gunfire. The hitters didn’t say a word. Cold as ice. The whole thing was like a hit by a gang of fucking Darth Vaders.”
Following the round of Monday morning quarterbacking, Stefanovitch was one of the first out of the briefing room. He was surprised that the commissioner hadn’t shown up. Why was that? Not enough teams had been assigned to do the follow-up work down in Atlantic City. Something had changed.
Back in his office on the Homicide floor, Stefanovitch flicked on the overhead lights. A familiar hum came with the lights. He hated the fucking buzz, hated everything mechanical in his life.
Suddenly he stopped. He stared at a man sitting in the wooden chair by his desk.
The man had a brown leather shoulder holster over a T-shirt that said “P.A.L.,” a police organization for helping kids around New York.
“Hello, Lieutenant Stefanovitch,” the man in the chair said. He didn’t bother to get up.
Detective Isiah Parker had come to visit.
62
Isiah Parker; One Police Plaza
“I’M ISIAH PARKER, I work in Narcotics uptown. Nineteenth Precinct? We’ve met a couple times over the years. I don’t know if you remember me or not?”
Stefanovitch shut the door behind him. He wasn’t even sure why. “Yeah, sure. How are you, Isiah? I saw your brother fight a couple of times. Terrific boxer.”
“He was a good fighter. Thank you.” Parker leaned forward until his elbows were on his knees. His legs and arms seemed too long for his body. There was a gracefulness in the way he moved, though. Stefanovitch thought he remembered that Parker had been a track star once upon a time.
Parker was serious and quiet as he lit up a cigarette. His eyes continued to make contact with Stefanovitch’s. He seemed to be searching for some hint of recognition; something that would tell him who the Homicide lieutenant was, where he was coming from.
Finally, Parker folded his arms. He started to speak in a soft, calm voice, almost as if he were telling a story to a friend.
“Three police detectives hit Alexandre St.-Germain, Lieutenant. I was one of those men. I also hit that scum Traficante. I was the one who got to Oliver Barnwell about a week later. Sorry to say, I don’t think I have any regrets about it.” Parker took a long pull on his cigarette.
“I need to talk now. I need to talk about a lot of things that have happened lately, including what did and didn’t happen in Atlantic City.”
The small office in Police Plaza seemed very still suddenly. Outside, there was the usual clamor of police business: phones ringing, typewriters and copier machines going at it.
Stefanovitch noticed a few things about Isiah Parker. Parker was a large man, even more physically impressive than his brother had been. He had workingman’s hands and muscular arms, the physique of a construction worker, or maybe even a coal miner.
Stefanovitch knew about Isiah Parker by reputation. His brother’s boxing career had drawn attention to him, but before that, Parker had been an item around the N.Y.P.D. Stefanovitch remembered that Parker had led Manhattan in arrests a couple of years back. He was known
as a hard-ass. Supposedly he was an honest street cop, too. He was arrogant and bullheaded, but maybe with some good reasons.
In some ways, his career in the department matched up with Stefanovitch’s. In other ways, they were worlds apart—about as far from one another as 125th Street in Harlem was from Main Street in Minersville, Pa.
“I think I need to back up a little, for you to understand some of this,” Parker said. His voice was still pleasant, as if the two of them were swapping department stories at a Blarney Stone.
Stefanovitch nodded. “I was going to suggest something like that. I’ll try not to get in the way too much. You go ahead and talk.”
63
“LET ME TRY TO GO all the way through this one time. Then you can ask questions…I investigated my brother’s murder against strict orders not to from upstairs. That’s a serious problem I have. I don’t obey orders real well, Lieutenant.”
“I can understand that. I’ve had similar problems a few times.” Stefanovitch broke into a smile. “Maybe more than a few times.”
Whatever Isiah Parker might have done, Stefanovitch liked him. Cop to cop, he was feeling a kinship. There was something down-to-earth about Parker. Maybe he was giving him points because of what had happened to his brother, but Stefanovitch didn’t think so.
“My brother got his title shot by playing along with the New York mobs. It was the only way to go, he told me. Maybe he was right, I don’t know. They wanted a lot of special favors in return.”
“What kind of favors?”
“They wanted to control Marcus. Own him. Say who he would fight. Where he would fight. After a while, he said no. Marcus didn’t take other people’s shit too well.”
“Your brother didn’t seem like the type.”
“This went on for maybe a year. Most of the best fights in the fight game don’t happen in the ring, Lieutenant. One day they brought him down to the Bowery. A place called the Edmonds Hotel. They murdered him there. The street law. In the newspapers, on TV, my brother supposedly died shooting up smack.