The Devil's Dozen

Twelve

“I knew you could do it, Raki. From that first day in Beirut, I said this guy has got what it takes.”

Charles DeSantis filled my glass and patted my shoulder. Two weeks before, his hand might have held a knife. Now he was full of bonhomie. The whole room was filled with bonhomie, Mafia style. Chiefs from a dozen New York, New England, and Middle Atlantic families were in attendance, invited by DeSantis so that they could witness his coup and get in line for distribution rights. There were enough elaborately cut suits, curdled gold cufflinks, Countess Mara ties, tiger’s eye rings, and Rolexes for a jewelry convention. Vera Cesare, sipping Chivas Regal with a secretive smile, stood out like Marie Antoinette in an ornate court.

But the heavy-handed fashion was a symbol of power. Just as DeSantis’s address was: a whole floor of the World Trade Center, the tallest building in the world. Manhattan and New York harbor were at the bottom of some great canyon. I was supposed to be very impressed.

“Hey, Happy,” a portly pin-stripped consigliere from Boston grabbed DeSantis by the elbow, “You say we’ve got to rush for a piece. How soon is the stuff going to get here.”

“Raki says in a week, right?”

“It’s coming by boat,” I said. “I flew ahead so that I could meet everyone.”

“So Raki and I could get together and iron out the last details,” DeSantis broke in possessively. He clapped his hands loudly. All the heads in the room turned in his direction. “Let’s have some quiet here. I got an announcement.

“A lot of you have been asking me why I bet $100,000 that this guy here, this Turk, could do what no organization on the other side has ever done. That is, to bring in 100 kilos of top-grade Turkish snow. Everyone said it was impossible, and I know that there are still a few people here who wouldn’t want to swear on their mothers’ graves that I’m telling the truth. I mean, everybody but everybody knows you just can’t hide that much stuff. Well, it turns out you can if you’ve got enough imagination. But,” he started smiling, “before I go any further, I see some hungry faces. Anybody like some candy?”

From the table drawer, DeSantis took a box of marzipan. On the lid was a raised gold illustration of the Holstentor. Along the edge in elegant script was a note that Royal Hauffmann marzipan was exported exclusively by Hauffmann Ubersee Gesellschaft. The box was a sample from a long night’s work.

“What is this? A joke?” one or two of the Mafiosos demanded.

“Take a piece,” DeSantis shoved the box at the most uninterested guest.

“I didn’t come here for candy.”

“Try it, you’ll like it,” DeSantis rose to the top of his wit. “Take it,” he added with rougher emphasis.

The Mafioso, a boss’s son type with mod sideburns, shrugged and took a piece. He bit, chewed, and spit on the rug.

“God, what the hell is that?”

“Marzipan, you jerk,” DeSantis laughed. “You never heard of marzipan before?”

“Come to the point,” one of the older men in the crowd shouted.

DeSantis took a piece of candy from the lower level in the box and gave it to the kid with side-burns.

“I tasted.”

“Taste again.”

With a grimace, DeSantis’s victim took a bite from the new piece. He spit on the mg again, but this time he knew what he’d eaten.

“Jesus, that’s pure snow! It’s heroin!”

DeSantis gave the rest of the piece to the Boston chief. All the other guests crowded around for a look at the candy box.

“It’s semi-processed opium,” a veteran from Chicago said. “Then what else did you do to it?”

“Vegetable coloring and stabilizer. They’ll come out in the processing here,” I answered.

The Chicagoan smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand.

“A goddamn brainstorm,” he exploded. “How much is a box worth? $200,000?”

“About. The top layers of all the boxes are real marzipan. There’s no way customs can spot the fake,” I said. “X-rays won’t help because nothing is hidden. Dogs won’t be any good because the heroin odor is covered by the almond smell. Besides, all customs really looks at is the contents slips we have to file with the Food and Drug Administration for imported food, and we have customs slips from four countries testifying to the purity of the almond powder. As long as nobody tries to hijack the shipment, it’s perfectly safe.”

Conversation in the room dwindled a lot faster than when DeSantis shouted for quiet.

“What do you mean by ‘hijacked?’” DeSantis asked, some irritation showing through his hospitality. “The only people who know about the shipment are in this room. Who here would try to hijack the stuff?”

“You,” I said. “You would.”

DeSantis pointed at his chest.

“Me? It’s my stuff? Why would I hijack it?”

“Because it’s not your stuff. You’re not my partner.”

DeSantis took a quick glance at every face in the room, but his eyes ended on me.

“This is a double cross? We made a deal, Turk, and you’re going to stick by it. You can’t just get here and start making a new deal with someone else. We respect a contract. All you’re going to get from acting so smart is a big zero.”

“You broke our deal, Mr. DeSantis. You sent at least four contracts out on me after we became partners. So there is no deal, and you forfeit your $100,000.”

DeSantis flushed. Angrily, he bullied everyone out of the way until he confronted Vera, who still sat as calmly as a purring cat on the sofa.

“He’s lying,” DeSantis told her. “Tell the people he’s lying.”

Vera set her drink of the sofa arm and looked at DeSantis with her wide eyes.

“But he’s telling the truth, Charlie. When I went, you told me just to find out where the opium stash was and then kill Raki. Then you also sent three Corsicans to do the job. But Raki took care of them instead.”

“And what about you?” DeSantis’s face turned a deeper red.

“I decided that he was telling the truth, that he could bring the heroin in. So, for the sake of the organization, I did not follow your stupid advice.”

“You little punk,” DeSantis wheeled towards me. I wanted him to get within arm’s reach, but a wall of broad shoulders suddenly came between us.

“Sounds to me,” the man from Boston said to DeSantis, “like you’re out a partner, Happy. He’s free to make another deal as far as I’m concerned.”

The other chiefs expressed unanimous agreement. DeSantis, who had been host, was now on the outside looking in.

“How do we make this new deal, though?” a pug-faced captain from Miami asked. “A 100-kilo shipment the first time. Another 100 kilos a month after that. That’s a lot of financial pooling Just to pay you off, Senevres. Hell, at $2 million cash on delivery, you’re asking for $24 million a year.”

“But it’s a lot of profit for the partner too,” the Boston consigliere interrupted. “$240 million on the market. The main distributor controls the biggest business in the country. At any rate, the family in charge has to operate from an East Coast port.”

“Any port will do,” the man from Los Angeles spoke up.

“The first shipment is coming to New York, so the main distributor should be here,” one of DeSantis’s local competitors pointed out.

“With your permission,” I said loudly. “With your permission, I want to remind you that it will be a week before the first shipment of candy arrives. That’s not a lot of time but it gives everyone a chance to put together their bids.”

“Bids?”

“Right. Since I no longer have a partner here, I’ve decided to auction off all the rights for distribution at one time. The auction will be five days from now, and it will be open to anyone.”

“It’ll be a damn convention,” the L.A. chief objected. “It’s tough enough as it is for this many of us to get together without the FBI on our backs. An auction is fine for you, it drives the price up. For us, it’s impossible.”

“No, it’s not,” Vera twirled the ice in her drink. “There’s one place everyone will be safe — Snowman.”

The only sound in the room was Vera’s ice cubes.

The Mafia chiefs were tom between greed and concern for their safety. In a sense, they had no choice. By allowing another family to wrap up the narcotics windfall I represented, they would allow their competitors unlimited money, and money bought “soldiers.”

My thoughts were different. I’d brought my shipment from Turkey to Germany. I’d killed men in Portugal and France. Now I was close to the jackpot, and the jackpot’s name was Snowman. Vera had first mentioned the name the day before when we were plotting DeSantis’s downfall.

Snowman was the neutral ground, the inviolate headquarters of the American Mafia somewhere in the Cascade Mountains, a fortress Washington had never even heard of except in the scribbled notebook of Jaime Montenegro. How did he hear of it? I didn’t know, but I remembered that he was heading for the Jet Set spa of Puerto Vallarta when he was killed. Who was luring Jaime? Perhaps Vera had the answer to that, too.

“Maybe,” the chief from the West Coast said, “that might be a very good idea. Not that anyone in this room would try to make a deal with Mr. Senevres behind everyone else’s back.” Not much, the Mafioso’s eyes said. “But a good, fair auction with everyone’s interests protected is what’s called for.”

“Right,” the Boston chief joined in. “Everybody gets a chance to bid, with the understanding that everybody respects the results. We’ll have what, shares in this German company, right?”

“That’s the way it will be done.”

“Watch out,” DeSantis’s angry voice cut through the room. “How do you know the whole thing isn’t a trap? He may be trying to set you all up for a raid by the Feds.”

The gathered Mafiosos broke into laughs.

“A little sour grapes, Happy? That’s tough.”

“Besides,” another added, “there’s no way they can reach us at Snowman, not with an army of Feds.”