The Best American Crime Writing 2006 by Mark Bowden Read Free Book Online Page A

until I get a lawyer to stop by," Red Hot said.
    "We just wanted you to take a ride with us down to the office."
    "The answer is no," Red Hot said.
    "We just want to get fresh fingerprints. We haven't taken yours in a while."
    "That's because I was in jail. And nothing happened to the prints you have.What are you trying to say, that they faded? They wore out?"
    His friend Frankie "Biff" LoBritto cut in,"Red Hot, if you go with them, you won't come back. They'll make up a case in the car."
    When the agents left, Red Hot said in a tired voice, "They'll be back. They're going to make up something and lock me up. Don't even worry about it."
    Some nights later Red Hot was walking into De Robertis when he dropped dead on the sidewalk.
    "He ruined the agents' schedules," Frankie Biff said. "They were going to put him away for sure without a case."
     
    I will now take you into intensive care to observe the last of the Mafia.
    The floor under them didn't even give a warning creak before opening up and causing everybody to tumble into the basement. This happened in March of this year when the United States Attorney in Brooklyn announced that, in the 1990s, two detectives, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, had killed at least eight people for money paid by Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, a demented killer and a boss of the Luchese Mob.
    From out of the basement climbed Tony Cafe. Immediately the FBI visited him for the second time. It needed some help. If there were any shooters roaming around Brooklyn, Tony Cafe had to stop them. For if any bodies appeared on the streets or in the gutters of Brooklyn, perhaps the FBI agents, in absolutely desperate trouble for having Eppolito and Caracappa accused of shooting people practically in front of them, would be thrown like miscellaneous cargo onto transport planes bound for Kabul and Baghdad.
    Politicians and the news media claimed the two detectives had committed the most treacherous and treasonous acts in the history of the police department.Would that it were true. Police officers serve wonderfully well and in these times do not even take a free cup of coffee. But there are isolated madmen who still pass the test and who have guns and could use money, and over the years the belief has been that many Mob shootings in Brooklyn have been done by cops.
    Tony's favor to the FBI consisted of finding the only two Mob gunmen left in Brooklyn and ordering them to keep their fingers still.
    There were other issues for the Mob. As ordered by the mandates of Christmas for Mafia captains, collections were taken up late in 2004 for traditional presents for the bosses of the five New York City Mafia families. The bosses now mainly were worried defendants and long-term prisoners. There was only one recognized boss, Joe Massino of the crime family named for the late big old mobster Joe Bonanno. I don't know what the other families did about Christmas collection money, for there was nobody worth a gift certificate.
    The men in the Bonanno crime family raised two hundred thousand dollars for Massino, the last boss. His liberty, however, was as shaky as a three-legged chair. He was in jail under the Gowanus Expressway in Brooklyn, held without bail while standing trial in federal court some blocks away. There were three murders and seven or eight prosecution witnesses of the type known as rats, including his wife's brother,"Good-Looking Sal" Vitale. Seated in the first row of the courtroom one afternoon was the wife, Josephine Massino. On the witness stand her brother was telling the court how Joe Massino's people came busting out of a closet and began firing away at three Bonanno mobsters he felt were dangerous dissidents.
    Joe Massino sat at the defense table with a computer. He was good and overweight. He had a round, bland face and short white hair. The heritage of great suits ended at his plain blue suit and open-collar white shirt. Glasses were perched on his nose as his pudgy fingers touched the computer