A Black Sail Read online

  “What’s in the packages?”

  “They’re running tests.” Feeney stared hard at Phillips as he spoke to Taylor. “That’s all you’re going to get today. You don’t publish any of this until those ships leave New York Harbor.”

  That was next Wednesday. Taylor had a week. It was also a reminder of the annoying feature story on the tall ships he had to write tomorrow, wasting time he should be spending on this.

  “Deal. As long as I don’t read it anywhere else.”

  As Taylor went down the stairs, Feeney jawed more at Phillips. “This is fucking wonderful. We’ve got to keep it out of the papers because of political heat and we’ve got a reporter up our asses.”

  “It’s only Taylor.”

  “It’s only our jobs, dipstick. Stay out of the fucking bar.”

  Taylor walked back to the subway.

  As they usually did, his thoughts turned to the story at hand. The brass’s desire to keep it quiet would give him time to find out what was in those packages. However, reporting on a citywide organized crime war over heroin was a much bigger project. It would require a ton of work. The old funk descended like an energy-sapping fog—gray and wet, dimming the light the story had kindled in the place where his ambition lived. The City News Bureau wasn’t the place to report on a big crime story. Christ, the other day he’d been in a cab and heard an AM deejay read one of his pieces. Taylor’s pride in his own work faded with each sentence as the announcer mangled, turned inside out and upside down a decent tale about a Bronx bank robbery gone wrong. By the time the report was over, Taylor was glad he didn’t get credit for radio stories. The bylines he did get in White Plains, Yonkers, and Newburgh weren’t worth a shit. When they ran a good story of his, the AP rewrote it and the New York papers jumped on it and did their own, like Taylor never existed.

  City News seemed the only option when the New York Messenger-Telegram went under. Had he turned down a career dead-end? Or worse, fallen down a deep well? The darkness of a well matched the black mood he had such a hard time escaping these days. He’d expected—hoped, at least—something better to have broken for him by now.

  Send good stories into the void, or not do them at all? Grim as the dilemma was, it wasn’t a choice for Taylor. If he knew about a crime, he had to go after it, even if only a single person would be on the other end to read it. He’d pursue the story of Bridget Collucci and hope the chase itself would push away the black and let in a little light.

  At the subway entrance, he had another decision to make—and it didn’t help his mood. Should he head back to Manhattan and visit his father, or go home to the apartment he and Samantha rented in Brooklyn Heights?

  Last night, Samantha and Taylor had both visited the professor at Roosevelt Hospital. He’d had the DTs the two previous days, but his head had cleared by the time they arrived. This Taylor knew because of the coherent invective he spewed at Taylor. He was used to it. But when his father turned on Samantha, Taylor insisted they leave. The nurse told them the old man was being held for at least a couple of days. Concerns about the liver.

  What was left to be concerned about?

  Taylor couldn’t face any of that tonight. He opted for home and Samantha.

  Chapter 3

  Taylor stared at the paper rolled into the typewriter—page three of the feature for newspapers on the ships of Operation Sail. His head hurt. For two hours, he’d been plowing through press releases and fact sheets, writing capsule descriptions of the 16 vessels that would parade into New York Harbor and up the Hudson River in three days.

  Naval terms floated around his head but refused to dock in memory. Full-rigged ship. Bark. Topsail schooner. Barkentine. Staysail schooner. For each ship, he had to look up the right definition so the viewer’s guide would accurately describe it. The terms had to do with number of masts and types of sails—that Taylor got—but he couldn’t keep them straight. At least the PR photos helped with the writing. The images were impressive, amazing even. Spray and waves, clouds of sail over shining decks, ropes forming impossibly intricate webs, sleek hulls cutting through foaming seas. So many sails. The ships were visions from the past. They’d make New York look like a harbor from out of another era, an era few left alive could remember.

  He also had to check and re-check the names and countries of the vessels. Esmeralda of Chile. Kruzenshtern of the Soviet Union. Gloria of Colombia. Juan Sebastian de Elcano of Spain. And 11 more.

  Though he was frustrated, Taylor did his journalistic duty and put extra effort into describing the Eagle, the U.S. Coast Guard Academy training ship that would lead the parade of sail on Sunday from under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. She was a bark—he checked his notes again—which meant she had two masts square-rigged and one at the back …. Damn, what was the one at the back called? Right, the mizzenmast, which was rigged fore-and-aft like a modern sailing ship. The squared-rigged masts were the type you saw on ships in pirate movies, back when they made pirate movies.

  Taylor worked another hour and a half on a piece about the International Naval Review, a separate fleet of 52 modern warships from 32 countries that would also visit on July 4th. Big as New York Harbor appeared to him yesterday—when his head wasn’t over the side of the launch—he wondered how they’d all fit. Cruisers, destroyers, transports, guided-missile ships, an aircraft carrier and on and on, along with 200 smaller sailing vessels and thousands of pleasure craft. He needed to ask someone at the Coast Guard about plans to handle all that waterborne traffic. He scribbled a reminder in his notebook. How big a job was it going to be to police America’s 200th birthday party? The short answer: very. In New York, the parade of sailing ships started at 11 a.m. Sunday and the celebrations would go on all day until the fireworks at 9 p.m.

  His head throbbing from concentration, he turned the two stories in to Cramly.

  “Took you long enough.” His tone was perpetually sour, something Taylor ascribed to decades of complaining.

  “Ships aren’t my specialty. Never worked for the Journal of Commerce.”

  “Hope you got them all right. This is important.”

  “Now you’re into the Bicentennial?”

  Cramly usually found excitement in the end of the workday and that was it. But his anxiety about keeping the job had him echoing what Novak had said yesterday. “We gotta do well on big events. Keep the clients happy.”

  “I hate big events.”

  “You hate any assignment you didn’t come up with.”

  “When everybody covers the same story, everybody gets the same story. Our clients should want something they’re not seeing on the AP.”

  “No, they want what everybody else has. They don’t want to get beat. It’s all about fear.”

  Taylor returned to his desk at the front of the little office. “So much ambition in journalism these days.”

  He called Marty Phillips. The narcotics detective wasn’t in. Taylor had already tried a couple of times that morning. He wanted to know what was in those packages found on Bridget Collucci’s corpse. Phillips was probably dodging Taylor. They had a deal, but that didn’t mean Phillips had to go out of his way to help Taylor. Nice little twist. Taylor would have to sit on the story while Phillips and Feeney worked the case and gave Taylor nothing else. He was used to little twists when he made deals with cops. There were other ways. He dialed Sidney Greene at 1 Police Plaza.

  “Whaddya need?’

  “A woman was pulled from the harbor at the Brooklyn piers.”

  “That’s supposed to be hushed up. We’re going to have the world watching our beautiful waters. Or haven’t you heard?”

  “Yeah I heard. I was there when the body came up. You got anything?”

  “Only what you said.”

  “Can you get more?”

  “You know how much I like to help.” Greene spoke in his usual bass whisper. Taylor imagined he spoke to everyone in a whisper. It was all Taylor had ever heard from him. “I can’t go around the building on fishing
expeditions. Something specific in mind?”

  Greene leaked information to Taylor—and, Taylor knew, to other reporters—not out of the whistleblower’s sense of justice or to expose wrongdoing. Nope. He did it to screw his bosses. A discontented minor bureaucrat—perhaps the most discontented Taylor had ever encountered—he got off on the chaos his tips caused. In a police department full of unhappy people, Greene could easily win Disgruntled Employee of the Month every month of the year.

  “Six packages wrapped in black plastic were taped to the victim. Can you find out what was in them?”

  “Lab work, eh? Might take time.”

  “Anything will be much appreciated.”

  “No it won’t. Let me see what I can find out.”

  Taylor went for lunch at the Gaiety Delicatessen on West 47th. Hot pastrami on rye with mustard, a Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray, and a side of rude from the waiter. He took his first bite. Pepper, grease, and mustard spice. And guilt. He kept his deli habit a secret from his grandfather, who owned a coffee shop at 75th and Madison. The diner-owning Greeks in his family viewed delis as their direct and only true competitors in New York. Taylor was an ecumenical eater.

  He spent the better part of the afternoon calling police sources around the city and waiting for calls to be returned. He listened for whispers about Bridget Collucci’s murder. Nothing there. He also checked to make sure there were no other crimes that required his immediate attention. So far on this Thursday, also a no.

  Done with calls, Taylor stopped by Samantha’s office. He only found her boss, Lew Raymond, the baritone-voiced radio detective turned real-life detective. He said she’d left to work a shoplifting stakeout at the Woolworth over in Hell’s Kitchen. Taylor wondered out loud how she would tell the shoplifters from the shoppers. Raymond laughed as if a radio mic hung in front of his face. At Samantha’s desk, Taylor jotted a quick note about his plans.

  Next he headed to Grand Central and the New York Central’s Hudson Line for the ride to Dobbs Ferry. He’d get to Carl Collucci’s house at about six. Not a terrible time to knock on the door. Of course, as far Collucci was concerned, there was no good time for Taylor to come knocking.

  “I’m talking to you because I’ll talk to anyone who might help identify who murdered my wife.”

  “When did you see her last?”

  Carl Collucci sat in a stainless-steel chair with square leather cushions, as did Taylor across from him. The narrow ultra-modern seat squeezed Taylor’s ass from both sides. There were two more chairs around a square coffee table, also steel with a glass top. Two standing lamps with egg-shaped silver fixtures looked like something out of Lost in Space. Collucci had dark-brown hair, eyes even darker, and the chiseled Latin features of a handsome Italian.

  Frank Sinatra sang “Summer Wind” at a volume set too loud, the black LP spinning on one of those expensive turntables Taylor had seen in Grand Central Radio.

  Old-fashioned tin wind-up toys—a rocket, a fire engine—as well as Matchbox cars, a Barbie doll and a stuffed bear lay scattered across the rug. Collucci’s sister had taken the children, a niece and a nephew, away as soon as Taylor arrived at the house on Hatch Terrace, a short walk from the train station by the Hudson River.

  “She went out to get a half gallon of milk at the 7-Eleven. Monday night. After an hour, I got worried and went looking for her. The guy at the 7-Eleven said he hadn’t seen her. That was when I called the Dobbs Ferry cops.”

  “What’d they do?”

  “Fucking town clowns. Took the information. Didn’t act concerned at all. Said they’d put it out. Tuesday goes by. Nothing. I’m going crazy. Then I got the call from the city.”

  The man stopped and rubbed his eyes.

  Taylor gave him a minute.

  “You’ll forgive me but … as you must know, your wife was dumped where drug suppliers drop heroin for pickup. She had six packages of something attached to her. Tests aren’t in yet. It’s a good guess—”

  “You’re the same as the fucking cops. I have no idea why that was done to her.”

  A door opened and closed loudly. Collucci turned his head toward the kitchen, worry pulling some of the anger off his face. There must be a backdoor.

  A big man with a face ugly as a potato strolled into the living room. He wore a dark-gray pinstripe suit with stripes as wide as highway lines. The look screamed mobster—or star of a community theater production of Guys and Dolls. The man folded his arms across his chest and his lumpy face took on the disapproving scowl of a schoolteacher. Collucci had invited Taylor in so Taylor figured he was safe. Plus, the FBI was somewhere nearby, listening. He hoped.

  “What’s going on?” the big man asked.

  Taylor flipped a page in his notebook. “You are?”

  “I’m Carl’s public relations consultant.”

  “That is funny.”

  “Wasn’t meant to be, fuckstick.” He glared at Collucci. “Why are you doing this?”

  Collucci shifted in the square chair. “ ’Cause it might help, Lucco.” He returned his gaze to Taylor. “Go ahead.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “Have a law practice here in Dobbs. Real estate and wills. Some traffic tickets and misdemeanors in village court for regular clients.”

  Couldn’t sound more plain vanilla.

  “Any regular clients involved with organized crime? Any contact with organized crime?”

  Lucco stepped closer to Taylor. This did nothing to diminish the impression he was a big buy. And an ugly one. “This man has suffered a terrible loss and you ask questions like that?”

  “I’m afraid Mrs. Collucci’s murder has organized crime written all over it. I’m sure someone in your line of public relations understands. This is all about trying to find connections. If you don’t see a connection—”

  “I don’t see nothin’ but a fucking creeper in a house dealing with tragedy.” Lucco grabbed Taylor by the right arm, pulled him out of the chair with ease, and shoved him toward the front door. “I understand Carl wants to do anything he can. Answering your questions is beyond fucking anything. You’re here to help yourself.”

  He yanked open the door and squeezed Taylor’s arm harder, presumably preparing to throw him down the concrete stoop. The heave never came. A big stick flew in out of the darkness and whacked Lucco right upside the head. The PR consultant staggered backward, already bleeding from an ear. Released, Taylor stepped away from the dark doorway into the relative safety of the living room. Who knew what would come through next?

  Turned out to be a white-haired man in a black suit, black tie, and white shirt brandishing the stick. A younger man, dressed much the same but red-haired, slipped in behind. Lucco went for his jacket, and for his trouble, got two more hard whacks—one to the arm, one to the head. He collapsed to the floor with blood coming from his ear and nose.

  The old man pointed at Lucco with his club, which was black except for a lighter almost maple-colored knob at the business end. “Keep an eye on him, Tommy.”

  Redheaded Tommy pulled a silver .38 and aimed at the injured man, who wasn’t doing much moving at this point.

  Collucci, apparently experiencing a universe of emotions in one evening, now looked surprised rather than frightened. “Goddammit, Liam. This is how you act after losing your daughter? You drive all the way from Flushing to break in and attack?”

  “You got that fucking right. Look at this.” He poked Lucco twice in the side with the stick. “This is the muscle you have? I took him out with three shots. Idiot.” He faced Collucci. “Women are supposed to be left out of business.”

  “There was no business. You know that.”

  Liam went on like he hadn’t heard. “They’re not supposed to be touched. Ever. Marrying you got my Bridget murdered. Marrying you and your whole goddamn family. She’s dead in the morgue because of something you goombahs got up to. Who and what got my daughter killed?”

  The knob of the club was aimed at Collucci’s face.


  “You gotta calm down.” Collucci indicated Taylor. “A reporter. Not the place to air out laundry.”

  “Don’t give a shit what he is. Probably thump his ass too.” Taylor now regretted not leaving when he might have. “I’ll thump on everyone until I find out who murdered Bridget. Whoever you’re working for is going to tell me if you can’t. Then I’m going to do something about it.”

  Lucco groaned and stirred.

  The sister could be heard from the kitchen, trying to sound forceful, but this was undermined by a quaver of fright. “I called the police. I won’t have violence in the house. Not with the children.”

  “Ah god, not those clowns.” Collucci put his head in his hands. “We don’t need them now.”

  “I sure won’t be fucking talking to them,” Liam said. “I will be talking to you again.”

  The younger man with the gun—a son, Taylor guessed from his looks—was already out the door. Liam followed.

  That was Taylor’s cue. Once the cops arrived, he’d be one more person to drag in and sort out later. He stopped at the doorway. A blue Chevy sedan took off. He turned around.

  “Address of your in-laws?”

  Collucci looked up from his hands. “Why should I tell you?”

  “You want this little family tiff to stay out of the news?” It was a bluff. This wasn’t the story, but he wanted the address right now.

  “Shit. This keeps getting worse and worse. O’Malley. Twenty Six One Forty-Fifth Place in Flushing. Now leave us alone.”

  Chapter 4

  An Irish girl from Queens married an Italian gangster. That was odd all by itself. The mobs were clannish, keeping to their own. Italian mobsters married Italian women. Irish mobsters, Irish women. The few Polish and Jewish gangsters left did pretty much the same. It was about trust—or some twisted version of it. About keeping money and territory in the family. A kind of feudalism.

  What was Bridget O’Malley doing with Carl Collucci?