Death Benefit

56.

WEEHAWKEN, NEW JERSEY MARCH 25, 2011, 8:48 P.M.

So, Berti, what about this Grazdani girl?” Buda asked. “Anybody in your organization might be related to her? I’ve been told she’s in her mid-to-late twenties and gorgeous. A real looker.”

Berti Ristani was sitting behind a desk in his office in a small industrial building in Weehawken. Berti’s office looked for all the world like the workplace of a reputable building contractor. Supply catalogs were piled on the desk, the room was ringed with file cabinets, and a storage chest for architectural plans stood in the back of the room. Ristani was a contractor, Buda knew, but not all his contracts involved construction.

Berti leaned back in his office chair, his huge body causing the frame to complain bitterly. Berti’s florid face, tracked with broken blood vessels, creased a little as he pondered Buda’s question.

“Ah, yes, the business you came for. But I never see you, Aleksander, do we need to talk business? How about a drink?”

“It’s a loose end, Berti. It’s something I need to take care of soon and I’m trying to do the right thing. I can’t leave the situation as it is for too long.”

Berti Ristani had no business agenda he wanted to bring up with Buda, and he was mildly offended that Buda kept bringing up this Grazdani issue. He’d been enjoying talking to Buda about old times when they both first arrived from Albania. Back in those days it was no easy thing getting to America. Both had been lucky. On top of a common past, Aleksander Buda was one of the crew leaders Berti respected, and he’d been pleasantly surprised when Buda showed up unannounced.

“Okay, let’s find out. I know no one by that name specifically, but I do have two of my best guys with a similar name. But it’s not Albanian. It’s Italian. Anyway, I might complain, but I appreciate your concern like this. There’s been far too many blood feuds. Thanks for coming to talk to me.”

“It’s nothing, Berti. It would be foolish to act any other way.”

Ristani shifted his weight forward and the chair complained again. He placed his fleshy arms on the table and punched a button on an intercom.

“Drilon, can you come in the office for a second?”

Ristani looked at Buda.

“Drilon, one of my most loyal guys. He and his brother, who’s out on a job.”

“Anything special?”

“Not really. He runs a bunch of books in South Jersey, down to Philly. Friday nights, he likes to collect. He’s smarter than a whip, in contrast to Drilon, who, as the saying goes, is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Oh, Drilon, come in here.”

Drilon was used to being called into his boss’s office from his perch near the building entrance numerous times each evening he was on duty. Usually Ristani wanted something to eat, and this was what Drilon expected on this occasion. He walked into the office and saw the back of a figure seated in front of Ristani’s desk.

“Drilon, Mr. Buda has a question.”

Buda? Had Drilon heard correctly? The man twisted in his seat and Drilon saw the scar on his forehead. It was Aleksander Buda, a serious dude. What did he want?

“Simple question,” Buda said without emotion. “Do you know anyone named Pia Grazdani?”

“Say that again,” Drilon said. He thought he was hallucinating.

“Pia Grazdani.”

He’d heard correctly. The name triggered a movie that played in fast-forward in Drilon’s head. Twenty or so years ago, at least, Drilon had been drinking, drinking a lot. He goes home where he lives with his brother, Burim, and his brother’s wife, Pia, and there’s Pia looking as hot as you like almost without a stitch on, and Burim’s out of the apartment running some errands like he was always doing trying to rise up in the Rudaj organization, one of the most notorious early Albanian mafias. But the bitch rebuffs his advances even though she was asking for it and digs her nails into his chest, like deep, and Drilon sees red. Goes berserk. What happens next, he certainly didn’t plan. He grabs his gun in a rage and shoots her in the forehead. Blam. Story’s over. But her kid’s there-little Pia. He considers shooting her too except he can suddenly hear people next door, so instead he hits her in the head with his gun, trashes the apartment, and takes the $500 stash that the brothers had hidden in the stove. He goes back to the bar where he was drinking, drinks more, stays until it closes, sleeps an hour on a park bench, and goes home to raise the alarm that his sister-in-law was murdered by intruders.

The fallout turned out to be a breeze. Burim accepted the intruder story as he was happy enough to be done with his wife and had been thinking seriously of dumping her, and the Rudaj organization and crew took care of everything. There was no investigation, no nothing. As far as anyone was concerned, Pia had just disappeared, leaving her daughter behind.

Did Buda mean either of those Pias?

“So?” Buda said. He’d noticed Drilon’s pause and blank expression. “Do you know a Pia Grazdani?”

Drilon felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. His face flushed, he could feel it. Three questions immediately crossed his mind: One, was he talking about Afrodita, his little niece, or Pia his sister-in-law? Drilon hadn’t given either of them a thought in more than twenty years, but one was dead and the other, who knows? Two, had Buda asked Burim the same question? And three, what the fuck was the correct answer?

“Er, I don’t think so,” Drilon said. “Why do you ask?”

Drilon had spoken to Buda, but it was Berti Ristani who spoke up.

“He’s asking because he wants to know. I’m asking you too, Drilon. I haven’t called your brother, because he’s busy at the moment. I assume you’d know if either you or your brother is related to this girl. The surname is pretty similar.”

“Let me think, we got a big family,” Drilon said. So Burim didn’t know-that was to his advantage. And perhaps it wasn’t her at all. But Drilon feared it was the girl-whose mother he murdered, a secret he’d managed to keep all this time. But if Aleksander Buda was asking about her, she probably was halfway in the ground already. Drilon could see no reason to rock the boat. There surely couldn’t be anything connecting him to the girl. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard the name.”

“You certain about that, Drilon? You took long enough thinking about it.”

“You know me, boss, I’m not the brightest guy. Like I said, we got a real big family, but mostly back in the old country.”

“So I’ve heard,” Ristani said conversationally.

“That’s right, boss.”

“What’s your family name?” Buda said. The expression on his face had changed not at all the whole time.

“Graziani,” Drilon said. It had been Burim’s idea to drop Grazdani after the Rudaj crew had been broken up and many of its members sent to jail. Graziani was the name Burim came up with when he asked Ristani for work years back. It was the surname of one of his favorite Italian soccer players, and he always liked the fact that it was close to his name too, off by only a single letter.

“It’s close but different. Italian instead of Albanian,” Berti said. “Close but no cigar. Thank you, Drilon.”

Drilon left the room. He was sweating and the color had faded from his face. He wanted to hide as far away from Buda as possible until the man left.

“Anyone else you need to ask?” Buda said.

“No, I know all the other guys’ families and have never heard of a Grazdani.”

The men hugged briefly, Buda having difficulty getting his arms around Berti.

“Let’s not be strangers,” Berti said, waving.

Buda got in his car, but before he drove away, he called Fatos Toptani, his most trusted man back in the Bronx. In the Buda organization, Fatos was number two.

“It’s me. I need to get hold of someone right now. Name is Burim Graziani, one of Ristani’s crew. He’s working down in South Jersey…. No, no, nothing heavy, I just need to ask him a question. Yeah . . . Something ain’t right here.”

From his office, Ristani waited a couple of minutes till he thought Buda had left the premises, then made a phone call of his own.