Island.
O’Toole, the lawyer, pushed open the glass and mahogany doors as they left the steak house. They passed a couple waiting for a cab under the forest green canopy. Caesar DeCicco, their bodyguard-driver, was opening the front door of Traficante’s limo.
“He’s a good boy,” Traficante said of his forty-seven-year-old bodyguard. “Loyal as a pet snake.”
Some jerk in a business suit wasn’t looking where he was going out on the Third Avenue sidewalk. He bumped into O’Toole, then brushed against Traficante’s Gucci suit.
“Hey…hey, easy. Whutcherrush?” the gangster bristled.
“I’m sorry. Excuse me, sir. Sorry,” Isiah Parker said.
The Uzi appeared out of nowhere.
A short burst followed, and the stocky bodyguard, DeCicco, was thrown bouncing up on the hood of the Cadillac.
The couple walking toward their cab dove to the ground, the woman shrieking. Patrons inside the restaurant suddenly stared at the scene in horror. The maître d’ went down on the floor.
A Colt Magnum flashed against Traficante’s mottled face.
“Cop killers,” Isiah Parker hissed at him. “Scumbag.”
The Magnum fired twice under Traficante’s chin. It lifted the mobster’s head right off his shoulders.
Parker dropped the gun right there. He and Jimmy Burke quickly, but calmly, walked down East Fiftieth to a waiting Buick Skylark. The two N.Y.P.D. detectives disappeared inside, and the nondescript sedan drove off.
Invisible men.
20
John Stefanovitch; One Police Plaza
AT A LITTLE past eight in the morning, Stefanovitch propelled himself between the double-glazed front doors and into the main lobby of One Police Plaza. He had two newspapers, a New York Times and a Post, folded over his lap. The news was all bad. “M AFIA H EAD S HOT D OWN ! M OB W AR R AGES .” His high from Coney Island was definitely over.
A used and battered VCR had been set up by Audio-Visual in a cozy interrogation room near his office. By eight-fifteen, he was viewing the first of the videocassettes that had been discovered at Allure.
As he watched the tape, Stefanovitch kept thinking about St.-Germain’s words, the phrase the two call girls had heard him use. “Are you from Midnight?” For years, there had been stories about something called the Midnight Club. Supposedly, it was a small group of crime lords who controlled organized crime around the world. The precise makeup of the Club remained mysterious.
Had the secretive Club ordered the deaths of St.-Germain and Traficante? Who inside the Midnight Club would be giving the orders? What might be on the sex tapes from Allure?
Stefanovitch had decided to watch the videotapes alone. He couldn’t imagine what might be recorded on the tapes, but he didn’t want anyone else there when he found out. Crime figures? Powerful New York businessmen? Entertainers? Politicians? Members of the Midnight Club?
The fewer people who knew what was on the tapes, the less complicated and political the murder investigation was going to be.
Sarah McGinniss was hunched forward inside a Checker cab. She was trying to leaf through some of her files on Alexandre St.-Germain as the taxi sped down the West Side Highway.
Much of the material in her St.-Germain file had been compiled by an unusual researcher, a former Organized Crime Task Force member. According to the files, many of the women involved in high-level prostitution weren’t professional hookers these days. They were more likely to be aspiring types in the glamour professions: models, actresses, women who worked at employment agencies, film-production houses.
According to her source, the super-rich didn’t have to exert themselves much in order to obtain sex. If they were at a Mortimer’s in New York, at Chasen’s or Spago’s in L.A., the maître d’ might have the names of available women, or men. The same was true at exclusive hotels. Bordellos like Allure operated in several cities around the country: Los Angeles, Miami, San
O’Toole, the lawyer, pushed open the glass and mahogany doors as they left the steak house. They passed a couple waiting for a cab under the forest green canopy. Caesar DeCicco, their bodyguard-driver, was opening the front door of Traficante’s limo.
“He’s a good boy,” Traficante said of his forty-seven-year-old bodyguard. “Loyal as a pet snake.”
Some jerk in a business suit wasn’t looking where he was going out on the Third Avenue sidewalk. He bumped into O’Toole, then brushed against Traficante’s Gucci suit.
“Hey…hey, easy. Whutcherrush?” the gangster bristled.
“I’m sorry. Excuse me, sir. Sorry,” Isiah Parker said.
The Uzi appeared out of nowhere.
A short burst followed, and the stocky bodyguard, DeCicco, was thrown bouncing up on the hood of the Cadillac.
The couple walking toward their cab dove to the ground, the woman shrieking. Patrons inside the restaurant suddenly stared at the scene in horror. The maître d’ went down on the floor.
A Colt Magnum flashed against Traficante’s mottled face.
“Cop killers,” Isiah Parker hissed at him. “Scumbag.”
The Magnum fired twice under Traficante’s chin. It lifted the mobster’s head right off his shoulders.
Parker dropped the gun right there. He and Jimmy Burke quickly, but calmly, walked down East Fiftieth to a waiting Buick Skylark. The two N.Y.P.D. detectives disappeared inside, and the nondescript sedan drove off.
Invisible men.
20
John Stefanovitch; One Police Plaza
AT A LITTLE past eight in the morning, Stefanovitch propelled himself between the double-glazed front doors and into the main lobby of One Police Plaza. He had two newspapers, a New York Times and a Post, folded over his lap. The news was all bad. “M AFIA H EAD S HOT D OWN ! M OB W AR R AGES .” His high from Coney Island was definitely over.
A used and battered VCR had been set up by Audio-Visual in a cozy interrogation room near his office. By eight-fifteen, he was viewing the first of the videocassettes that had been discovered at Allure.
As he watched the tape, Stefanovitch kept thinking about St.-Germain’s words, the phrase the two call girls had heard him use. “Are you from Midnight?” For years, there had been stories about something called the Midnight Club. Supposedly, it was a small group of crime lords who controlled organized crime around the world. The precise makeup of the Club remained mysterious.
Had the secretive Club ordered the deaths of St.-Germain and Traficante? Who inside the Midnight Club would be giving the orders? What might be on the sex tapes from Allure?
Stefanovitch had decided to watch the videotapes alone. He couldn’t imagine what might be recorded on the tapes, but he didn’t want anyone else there when he found out. Crime figures? Powerful New York businessmen? Entertainers? Politicians? Members of the Midnight Club?
The fewer people who knew what was on the tapes, the less complicated and political the murder investigation was going to be.
Sarah McGinniss was hunched forward inside a Checker cab. She was trying to leaf through some of her files on Alexandre St.-Germain as the taxi sped down the West Side Highway.
Much of the material in her St.-Germain file had been compiled by an unusual researcher, a former Organized Crime Task Force member. According to the files, many of the women involved in high-level prostitution weren’t professional hookers these days. They were more likely to be aspiring types in the glamour professions: models, actresses, women who worked at employment agencies, film-production houses.
According to her source, the super-rich didn’t have to exert themselves much in order to obtain sex. If they were at a Mortimer’s in New York, at Chasen’s or Spago’s in L.A., the maître d’ might have the names of available women, or men. The same was true at exclusive hotels. Bordellos like Allure operated in several cities around the country: Los Angeles, Miami, San
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