The Wrong Man

36

The black town car picked up Peter Ramini at precisely nine in the morning, as Ramini exited the drugstore. He got into the backseat and quickly returned his hands to his coat pockets.

Next to him, Donnie ate a bagel lathered with blueberry cream cheese, more than a little of which found resting places on his chin or his ever-expanding stomach. The guy was like a beached whale. But he was the only person Paulie Capparelli trusted, the only person in the world who could lean down and whisper into Paulie’s ear and receive advice back the same way.

“Whaddaya got, Pete?” Donnie grunted.

“I got a problem, that’s what I got.”

“Tell Donnie. Donnie will make it all better.”

Ramini glanced over. Sometimes Donnie forgot that he was the courier, not the decision maker.

“You remember this thing back in January, almost a year ago, with that lady at the law firm.”

Donnie grunted again. That meant yes. “Polish name.”

“Rubinkowski, right.”

“A beautiful piece of work, my friend. They pinched some other guy, and the fucknut actually confessed to it.” Donnie had a good chuckle with that. “He says he was insane, right?”

“That’s right, Don. But listen. So we just had this other thing-the one with Zo.”

Donnie grew quiet with the change in topic. Of course he recalled that. Lorenzo Fowler, at one time, had been one of those guys who could whisper in the capo’s ear, only then the capo was Rico Capparelli, not Paulie. Still, even with the transition, Zo had been considered a trusted member of the inner cabinet-trusted, that is, until the problem with the strip club owner. Nobody had told Zo to take a baseball bat to the guy, and then, of all things, he fucking died from the injuries.

Lorenzo had been feeling the hot breath of law enforcement on his neck, and it wasn’t hard to see the nerves getting to him. Enough so that Paulie ordered a close watch over Lorenzo.

So when Lorenzo made a phone call to set up a meeting with Jason Kolarich-not one of their Mob lawyers but a total outsider-Paulie knew about it within ten minutes. And he didn’t like it.

“You remember how Zo called that attorney,” said Ramini.

“Yeah. Right. We figured he was gonna cut and run. Use an outside lawyer so we wouldn’t know.”

“Right. So remember this lawyer’s named Jason Kolarich.”

“Right.” Donnie took a mountainous bite of his bagel. “Kolarich. What is that, Russian? Bulgarian?”

Ramini breathed in, breathed out.

“Romanian? No, Hungar-”

“Don, how the fuck should I know? He’s from… Paraguay, okay? He’s from fucking Antarctica. I fucking care.”

“Petey-”

“I’m trying to make a serious point here. I got a problem here, all right?”

“Okay, Petey.” Donnie patted Ramini’s knee. “Listen, I know this already. Lorenzo goes to see the lawyer. We’re afraid he mighta told him things. Lots of things. But then you took care of Lorenzo. So that erases the lawyer from the equation. He’s got nobody to worry about after Lorenzo was in the ground. Problem solved, right?”

“Wrong. Because this guy Kolarich, he’s not some random lawyer. We figured Lorenzo picked just anybody. Like outta the phone book or whatnot.”

“Right.”

“Right, but it turns out Kolarich isn’t just some random guy. Kolarich is the lawyer who is defending the guy they pinched on the Rubinkowski thing.”

Donnie stopped in mid-bite. His head slowly turned to Ramini, cream-cheese chin and all. “The guy who says he’s crazy?”

“Right. Tom Stoller is his name. But whatever. Point being, Zo wasn’t just talking to some stiff. He was talking to the guy trying to figure out who killed Kathy Rubinkowski.”

Donnie wasn’t sure what to say, which has hardly surprising. When Donnie fell out of the tree, he hit a few stupid branches on the way to the ground. Undying loyalty was in his job description. Smarts, not so much.

“So taking care of Zo doesn’t automatically take the lawyer outta the equation,” Ramini said. “If Zo told this lawyer how the Rubinkowski thing really went down-”

“Did he?”

“I don’t know, Don. But here’s the thing. Sounds like this lawyer isn’t so much going with this insanity thing anymore.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because remember the guy who hired us on Rubinkowski?”

Donnie thought for a moment. This could take a while. “The industrial guy. Moneybags from bumblefuck.”

“Manning. Randall Manning,” said Ramini. “Manning pays me a visit the other day. He says this lawyer Kolarich is sniffing around him. Asking questions that don’t sound so much like he’s pleading insanity anymore. More like he’s trying to solve a puzzle. And sounds like he’s getting pretty fucking warm. Warm like a fucking blowtorch.”

Donnie moaned.

“I just watched this lawyer Kolarich,” Ramini went on. “I just watched him last night, looking over the scene, trying to figure the thing out. The whole time, I’m thinking, he’s looking at this like it’s a pro job.”

“Oh, motherfuck,” Donnie moaned.

“I know all about this Kolarich. I did good intel back when Zo paid him a visit. He used to be a prosecutor, and now he thinks he’s a cowboy. You remember this thing our last governor had with the feds?”

“The governor?” Donnie turned to him. “That was Kolarich?”

“He was right in it, yeah. A fucking crusader, this guy.”

“So this crusader,” said Donnie. “This guy who ain’t afraid of nobody. Does this crusader got a family?”

Donnie might not be a rocket scientist, but he knew a thing or two. It was the right question to ask.

“Not really. Wife and daughter died in a car accident. His dad is upstate on a fraud pinch. But dad and kid are on the outs, anyway. He’s never visited him, far as we know. There’s also a brother, but he’s fucking around in the Cayman Islands.”

“That’s no help.”

“Hey, Mooch, turn right up here,” Ramini hollered to the driver, Donnie’s brother. If it was possible to be less talented than Donnie, his brother was it. “I’m going to the gym.”

“Whaddaya do, like the treadmill and Nautilus and whatnot?” Donnie asked.

“Ah, they got a track. I run, mostly.”

“I’ve been thinking about doing that myself.”

Ramini looked over at his three-hundred-pound friend. “Yeah, you might want to think about that, Don.”

The car pulled up to the gym.

“Talk to Paulie, Don,” said Ramini. “Talk to him today.”

“So nobody? C’mon, Petey, nobody we can tie to this lawyer? No one he cares about?”

Peter Ramini thought for a moment. He thought about watching Kolarich and company reenacting the crime scene. This could get complicated very quickly.

“He’s got a lady friend,” he said.