Darkfall

Blaine said, borrowing Jack’s placating tone and gestures.
    “Like hell,” Nevetski said.
    “He doesn’t mean anything by it,” Blaine said.
    “Like hell,” Nevetski said.
    “He’s extraordinarily tense this morning,” Blaine said. In spite of his brutal face, his voice was soft, cultured, mellifluous. “Extraordinarily tense.”
    “From the way he’s acting,” Rebecca said, “I thought maybe it was his time of the month.”
    Nevetski glowered at her.
    There’s nothing so inspiring as police camaraderie, Jack thought.
    Blaine said, “It’s just that we were conducting a tight surveillance on Vastagliano when he was killed.”
    “Couldn’t have been too tight,” Rebecca said.
    “Happens to the best of us,” Jack said, wishing she’d shut up.
    “Somehow,” Blaine said, “the killer got past us, both going in and coming out. We didn’t get a glimpse of him.”
    “Doesn’t make any goddamned sense,” Nevetski said, and he slammed a desk drawer with savage force.
    “We saw the Parker woman come in here around twenty past seven,” Blaine said. “Fifteen minutes later, the first black-and-white pulled up. That was the first we knew anything about Vastagliano being snuffed. It was embarrassing. The captain won’t be easy on us.”
    “Hell, the old man’ll have our balls for Christmas decorations.”
    Blaine nodded agreement. “It’d help if we could find Vastagliano’s business records, turn up the names of his associates, customers, maybe collect enough evidence to make an important arrest.”
    “We might even wind up heroes,” Nevetski said, “although right now I’d settle for just getting my head above the shit line before I drown.”
    Rebecca’s face was lined with disapproval of Nevetski’s incessant use of obscenity.
    Jack prayed she wouldn’t chastise Nevetski for his foul mouth.
    She leaned against the wall beside what appeared to be (at least to Jack’s unschooled eye) an original Andrew Wyeth oil painting. It was a farm scene rendered in intricate and exquisite detail.
    Apparently oblivious of the exceptional beauty of the painting, Rebecca said, “So this Vincent Vastagliano was in the dope trade?”
    “Does McDonald’s sell hamburgers?” Nevetski asked.
    “He was a blood member of the Carramazza family,” Blaine said.
    Of the five mafia families that controlled gambling, prostitution, and other rackets in New York, the Carramazzas were the most powerful.
    “In fact,” Blaine said, “Vastagliano was the nephew of Gennaro Carramazza himself. His uncle Gennaro gave him the Gucci route.”
    “The what?” Jack asked.
    “The uppercrust clientele in the dope business,” Blaine said. “The kind of people who have twenty pairs of Gucci shoes in their closet.”
    Nevetski said, “Vastagliano didn’t sell shit to school kids. His uncle wouldn’t have let him do anything that seamy. Vince dealt strictly with show business and society types. Highbrow muckety-mucks.”
    “Not that Vince Vastagliano was one of them,” Blaine quickly added. “He was just a cheap hood who moved in the right circles only because he could provide the nose candy some of those limousine types were looking for.”
    “He was a scumbag,” Nevetski said. “This house, all those antiques-this wasn’t him . This was just an image he thought he should project if he was going to be the candyman to the jet set.”
    “He didn’t know the difference between an antique and a K-Mart coffee table,” Blaine said. “All these books. Take a closer look. They’re old textbooks, incomplete sets of outdated encyclopedias, odds and ends, bought by the yard from a used- book dealer, never meant to be read, just dressing for the shelves.”
    Jack took Blaine’s word for it, but Rebecca, being Rebecca, went to the bookcases to see for herself.
    “We’ve been after Vastagliano for a long time,” Nevetski said. “We had a hunch about him. He seemed like a weak link. The rest of the Carramazza family is as disciplined as the fuckin‘ Marine Corps. But Vince drank too much, whored around too much, smoked too much pot, even used cocaine once in a while.”
    Blaine said, “We figured if we could get the goods on him, get enough evidence to guarantee him a prison term, he’d crack and cooperate rather than do hard time. Through him, we figured to finally lay our hands on some of the wiseguys at the heart of the Carramazza organization.”
    Nevetski said, “We got a tip that Vastagliano would