Private: #1 Suspect

CHAPTER 82

Carmine Noccia’s Father was a thug; so was mine. Carmine and I had both gone to Ivy League schools, we’d both served in the Corps, and both our fathers had given us the keys to the family business.

Beyond that, Carmine Noccia and I had nothing in common.

Carmine was a third-generation killer, never caught, never even charged. The FBI had him on their watch list, but they had no evidence to support their certain knowledge that he’d had three people murdered.

There’d been no fingerprints. No smoking guns. No surveillance tape.

Snitches had been killed before testifying.

Carmine’s father, the don, was ready to retire, and Carmine was rumored to be stepping into his job-and more. According to the stories, the Noccia family was expanding east in the coming year, from their Vegas hub to Chicago.

It was unprecedented in Mob history for a satellite organization to return to its roots, but Noccia had brass and his father had raised him to accomplish big things.

The hijacked van stuffed with thirty million in pharmaceuticals had been the first major move in Carmine’s expansion plan, and now that same van was standing in his way. And because six months ago I’d reached out to Carmine to protect my brother from a lesson he might not have lived to regret, I was in bed with a mobster. On a first-name basis.

Noccia called me at around three in the morning. He didn’t say hello. He said that his distributors, having paid for the drugs, were very unhappy.

He’d made this point to me before.

I said, “We’re on the job, Carmine. I didn’t need the wake-up call.”

“We don’t have clocks around here,” he said.

Another way of saying that my time was his time.

I brought Noccia up to date on the plan going forward, and he hung up without saying good-bye.

I fell back to sleep.

I was running after Colleen, trying to tell her that I was sorry, but she wouldn’t stop running away from me. The phone rang again.

This time my caller was my good friend Lieutenant Mitchell Tandy.

“I’m in the neighborhood, Jack. I’d be happy to stop by if there’s anything you’d like to tell me.”

“I told you, Mitch. I didn’t do it.”

Tandy laughed pleasantly and hung up.

By the time Justine phoned to report on Danny Whitman’s arrest on suspicion of murder, I was wide awake.