Saints Of New York by R.J. Ellory Read Free Book Online

time. Twenty minutes and I have I another appointment.'
    'That'll
work fine, 'cause I have an appointment in fifteen.'
    'Seriously,
I need you here on time. We can't get anywhere in fifteen minutes.'
    'So
what do you want? You want me to stay or go?'
    'Stay.
Sit down. We'll make a start. You were going to think about discussing your
father.'
    'I
did think about it.'
    'So
are you willing to talk about him?'
    'Where
are you from, Doctor Marie?'
    'I
can't see what that has to do with anything.'
    'Humor
me.'
    'Originally
I'm from Chicago.'
    'Another
good gangster town, eh? So how long have you been in New York?'
    'Three
years this Christmas.'
    'You
know a lot about it?'
    'Why?'
    'Well,
New York is a union town. Always has been, always will be. Democrats generally.
Only exception was when they brought in Giuliani, who turned Republican in the
Eighties. He served his time with the US Attorney's Office for the Southern
District, became US Attorney himself, the big boss of the hot sauce, and then
he was Mayor from January 1994 to December 2001.'
    'I
remember him from the 9/11 attacks.'
    'Right.
And you remember when he ran for the Senate, and then the White House? He was a
tough guy, big heart, but up against more internal shit than he ever bargained
for.'
    'In what way?'
    'Hell, Marie,
you have to understand the nature of the city, some of its history, to really
appreciate what happened. What's still happening.'
    'I've got time.'
    'You really
wanna hear this shit?'
    'I want to hear
about your father. That's really what I want to hear about, Frank.'
    'Well, if you
want to hear about John Parrish then you have to hear all about the Saints of
New York.'
    'The who?'
    'The Saints of
New York. That's what they called themselves, bunch of egotistical assholes.'
    'So who were
they? The only thing I hear about your father is how many decorations he got,
how he and his colleagues helped break the back of Mafia control in the city.'
    'The truth and
what you hear are never the same thing in this business, believe me. The Fulton
Fish Market, the Javits Convention Center, waste haulage, the garment
industry, the construction business . . . hell, they were into everything.
Organized crime was so much a part of this city that no-one thought they could
ever be separated. But that's what the OCCB and the Strike Forces and the Feds
tried to do, and to a degree they succeeded. But even in their finest hour
there was still so much internal corruption, so much money passing hands, that
no-one ever really knew who was clean and who wasn't.'
    'And your
father?'
    'You really want
to know about him, then we'll have to begin at the beginning.'
    'Then do that,
Frank.'
    'Well, okay,
here we go. New York City. You got the five boroughs, okay? Manhattan, the
Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. We have one New York Police
Department, but each borough has its own DA. Then there's the Department of
Justice, and they have US Attorney's Offices in every federal judicial district
in the country. There are two districts in New York, the Southern in Manhattan
and the East in Brooklyn. The
    DOJ also has the
FBI, and they operate independently of the US Attorney network. The FBI is
responsible for investigating cases, the US Attorney for prosecuting them. It's
supposed to be that simple. There are three FBI offices in New York City - or
were back then - Manhattan, Queens and New Rochelle. Each one worked
independently until the action against organized crime stepped up in the
Eighties and these boys started getting smart, working together. So you got
this system going on, right? The Feds raise the cases, the Attorney's Office
prosecutes. You with me?'
    'Yes, go on.'
    'Okay. Then
comes RICO. That's the federal act against racketeering and corruption, and it
gave the Feds the authority to investigate anything - and I mean anything - that
they felt might relate to organized crime. So the Feds started getting cases together
and bringing them to the relevant US Attorney's