53
PELLETTIERI CONCRETE was on Verona Street, an industrial strip of Red Hook just off the East River in Brooklyn. Jack Pellettieri was in the office by himself, the front door locked. It was a little after ten at night, and he was going through the books, preparing his company for bankruptcy. The ink was barely dry on the wrongful-death settlement, and the plan was for the company to be in Chapter 11 before the plaintiffs could come for their money. His insurance company was first on the hook for paying off the lawsuit, but there was little doubt that they’d refuse to pay, arguing that the accident had been caused by deliberate misconduct.
It’d be a long, tedious fight, and Pellettieri couldn’t bring himself to give much of a shit who ultimately won. His company was going under no matter what; there was no bringing it back. It’d been a dead man walking ever since the accident. Their work had completely dried up, and while they had finished doing the Aurora, that had just been a matter of litigation strategy by the developer and the contractor. Omni had been on their ass every step of the way.
So Pellettieri was doing what was left to do: getting the books in order. It was not a task he could leave to anyone else. He was stripping out what assets he could before the company filed Chapter 11. His company’s books had always had a tenuous correlation to its actual operation. Their equipment—from the mixers and trucks on down—was all rented from other companies that Pellettieri also owned. Pellettieri paid well over the market rates to rent equipment from himself, an easy way to make some extra money on a job. It was fraud, technically, but everybody did it. The company’s assets had always been kept to a minimum, and Pellettieri was making sure that he had as much of them flowing out to his other companies as he possibly could.
Not that Pellettieri expected to be around to enjoy it, not anytime soon. The DA’s Rackets Bureau had its knives out for him, and his lawyer had made it clear that real jail time was almost certainly in the cards. Pellettieri was already thinking about a plea—it’d be too risky to go to trial on manslaughter charges.
He was surprised at the extent he’d made his peace with it. But the accident was his fault, ultimately: he’d gotten too greedy, taken unnecessary risks. The skimming and no-show billing and all that were one thing, but putting the people who worked for him in danger was another. Sure, Jeremy Roth had paved the way, but Pellettieri couldn’t bring himself to blame Jeremy for what had happened, not anymore. He was a stupid rich kid, somebody born to it who couldn’t tie his own shoes. You couldn’t blame such a child for a man’s mistakes.
Pellettieri was jerked out of his reverie by a noise. He looked up, trying to figure out what it was he’d just heard. A moment later he saw a shadow moving across his open office door.
“Burning the midnight oil, my man,” Darryl Loomis said as he stepped into the room.
Pellettieri found himself standing up behind his desk. Back when his brother, Dominic, had been his partner, there’d been a pistol in the drawer, but those days were long gone. “How’d you get in here?”
“I’ve had a key to this place for weeks,” Darryl said.
“You kidding?” Pellettieri said, still standing.
“Don’t worry, I didn’t steal nothing,” Darryl said. He looked at Pellettieri. “Why you all jacked up and shit? Sit down, relax.”
“You been spying on me?” Pellettieri said, reluctantly sitting.
Darryl, still standing, smiled thinly, a show of diminishing patience. “Course we have. Thought you’d be taking that for granted.”
“I’ve done everything you guys asked,” Pellettieri said. He was looking up at Darryl now, which he suspected was the reason the man had told him to sit. “I haven’t caused any trouble.”
“But trouble we have, Jack. Has ADA Sullivan come to you about making a deal?”
“Deal? They haven’t even arrested me; how’s there going to be a deal?” Pellettieri said. If Darryl was here to kill him, Pellettieri thought, he wouldn’t bother talking to him first, and wouldn’t have come alone. He wasn’t sure either of those things was actually true.
“Nothing tests a man’s sense of loyalty like looking down the barrel of serious prison time,” Darryl said. “I’ve seen brother turn against brother.”
“I’ve earned a little more respect than this, Darryl,” Pellettieri said angrily.
“You can think that,” Darryl replied. “But there’s a solution for everybody. You run.”
Pellettieri couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I’m in my fifties. I’ve got a wife and kids.”
“Your kids are grown,” Darryl replied evenly. “And your wife won’t much like going to visit you in jail.”
“If I run and they find me, things will be a lot worse.”
“Not like we’re talking about buying you a one-way ticket to Mexico here,” Darryl said. “I’ll be putting together your plan.”
“And what if I say no?” Pellettieri demanded.
Darryl’s expression didn’t change, his face impassive, his eyes blank. “You think you’ve been asked a question?”