Sal laughed. “No, you won’t, Johnny. You know you can’t trust the goombahs and, besides, your sister would cut off your balls.”
Casale scoffed, then asked, “And how is my sister?”
At 11:00 a.m., Rosandich used the office phone in Pappa’s Café to call Charles Forsythe.
“Jeez, where the hell are you?” Forsythe asked.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“There was a guy from the old country in here asking about you. I think that bond you cashed in got your old partners’ attention.”
Old country was code for New York City. “No surprise there.”
“I wanted to contact you as soon as this mook walked out of here, but without a phone, how the hell am I supposed to reach you?”
“I-I’m sorry. I can’t risk it.”
“That’s fine and dandy, but that mook blew up my car this morning.”
“Oh, my God, are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah; no one was hurt. But this thing just escalated to a new level.”
Rosandich took a moment to catch his breath. Rosen was now closer to him than he’d been at any time over the last nine years. Nine years of being frightened every time a stranger looked at or talked to him. He knew Rosen, Rice & Stone wanted the documents he’d taken. He also suspected they wanted him out of the picture. Permanently.
“I-I need your help, Charlie. I want to redeem the rest of my bonds.”
“All of them?”
“Yeah. All one point nine million.”
“That’s a lot of cash.”
“I’m leaving California and I don’t want anything with me that will leave a trail. When you get the cash from the bonds, convert it to cashier’s checks.” He cleared his throat and then said, “I also have some documents. I want you to call Sy Rosen and tell him you’ll send him the documents in return for the firm sending you forty-five million dollars.”
“Forty-five million? How’d you come up with that number?”
“That’s the number I need.”
“You sure about this? You actually believe they’ll pay that kind of money?”
“Absolutely. I’ll messenger the documents to you. I want you to open a safety deposit box and put the docs in it. Then messenger the box key to my attention at St. Anne’s Shelter in Redondo Beach.”
“Sure,” Forsythe said. Then he asked, “Where are you going?”
Rosandich’s hands vibrated as fear flooded his nervous system. “Better I don’t say.”
“Bruno, don’t you think—?”
His throat tightened as he yelled a warning: “Don’t use that name. Someone could be listening.”
“Sorry…Cecil.”
“You tell Rosen I’ll sign a non-disclosure agreement that states I’ll never say a word about what I know. Tell him there are no copies of the docs.”
“You know the non-disclosure agreement won’t be enforceable.”
“They know me, Charlie. They know that I would never go back on a promise.”
“It’s about damned time you went on the offensive. But why don’t you just come out of the dark and go to the SEC?”
Rosandich’s throat tightened again. “You think the SEC can protect me from my former partners? They’ll whack me before I could ever testify. Besides, you think the SEC will pay me forty-five million?”
Forsythe said, “How do you want to do this?”
“I’ll call you with the details. In the meantime, call Rosen.”
“Okay. Be careful, my friend.”
CHAPTER 19
Janet wanted to scream. After a wasted thirty minutes with a non-communicative Jasmine Essam, and a fruitless hour with Claudia Barkley, she marched out through the front door of Presbyterian Hospital and ran into Hugo Rosales.
“You look as pissed off as I feel,” Rosales told her.
Janet pointed up at the building. “Mrs. Barkley won’t testify against her husband and Jasmine Essam just wants to die.”
“Well, I’ve got more bad news. A judge let Barkley out on a ten-thousand-dollar bond. He only had to put up a thousand in cash, which his brother provided.”
“Holy shit,” Janet cursed. “He might come straight here.”
“I’m putting a uniform on her room as long as she’s in the hospital.” He shrugged. “But after that, all bets are off.”
“Oh, God. We could provide a room for her at St. Anne’s, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she refused it.”
Rosales’s expression turned sour. “I understand there’s a quarter-million life policy on the bastard through his work. Maybe he’ll fall down a flight of stairs and crack his head open.”
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Janet said.
Rosales’s eyebrows caterpillared along his forehead. “You know I was just joking about him falling down stairs, right?”
She felt her face go hot. “Of course,” she said. “Of course.” She showed a smile, but didn’t think it came across as genuine.
On her drive back to St. Anne’s, Janet considered Claudia Barkley’s situation. The frustration she felt just seemed to expand to the point where it might blow off the top of her skull. To make matters worse, the Barkley woman was just one of many in a similar predicament.
Sal Trujillo jack-hammered his feet on the wood floor of his second-floor home office. He knew the thumping always drove his wife crazy, but he was pumped about the information he’d found for his brother-in-law, Johnny Casale. The phone continued to ring, which caused him to become more agitated and to thump his feet faster and heavier.
“That you, Sal?”
“Finally, Johnny. What the hell are you doing out there? Going to the beach?”
“Beach, my ass. What d’ya got?”
“I’ll send you an email, but here’s what I came up with. Charles Forsythe was born Carlo Massarino and grew up in Brooklyn. Has a brother and a sister who still live there. He attended Regis High School, which, as you probably know, ain’t easy to get into. He was all-state in wrestling. From there he went to Harvard on a full ride. He worked on Wall Street for a dozen years and then moved to California. He changed his name to Forsythe shortly after he made the move. Married a girl from an old-line California family. Got three kids and four grandkids.”
Casale scoffed. “Changed his name so he’d fit in better out here. Hard to believe that sort of thing would be necessary.”
“I suspect changing his name had nothing to do with fitting in,” Trujillo said. “You remember when the Justice Department went hot and heavy against the Families back here?”
“Of course. It was a bad time for a lot of my friends. That RICO statute took down the Mafia.”
“Well, Carlo Massarino’s father was a made guy with the Luccheses. Carlo did everything he could to avoid being tainted by his father’s mob connections. When things got bad here, he put three thousand miles between him and his family and changed his name.”
“I see,” Casale said. “Makes sense.”
“Yeah. But Johnny, I gotta warn you. Carlo Massarino, or Charles Forsythe, whatever you call him, is a tough sonofabitch. His father wanted him to take over the family business, if you know what I mean. It broke the old man’s heart when his eldest son moved away and changed his name. Carlo had the toughness to be a Mafioso and the brains to be the heir to the Lucchese organization.”