“Now you’re talking,” Cable said. “I love money laundries.”
“Barone’s girl told me he was in Mexico a lot,” Stone said. “What about Barone himself? Does he have a sheet?”
“Two arrests as a teenager, in New York, for running numbers.”
“He’s connected, then,” Cable said. “Why don’t I see what I can do about some wiretaps?”
“Good idea,” Stone said, “but I think there’s a lot more to this than Barone and his company.”
“Like what?” Cable asked.
“Ever hear of Abalone Fisheries?”
“Yeah. Holding company, isn’t it?”
“Right, but it’s who’s doing the holding.”
“Who?”
“Two guys named David Sturmack and Onofrio Ippolito.”
“Ippolito, the chairman of Safe Harbor Bank?”
“The same. Abalone owns twenty-odd percent of Safe Harbor and nearly all of Barone Financial.”
“Now you’re getting really interesting,” Cable said.
“You ever hear of Sturmack?”
“Can’t say as I have.”
“He’s a lawyer who doesn’t practice law, son of a guy who worked closely with Meyer Lansky. He’s clean on paper, but he had major connections with the unions, especially the Teamsters.”
“And Ippolito is in business with him? I mean, Ippolito has a reputation as upstanding.”
“This upstanding citizen,” Stone said, “ordered a hit on me last night.” He told Cable the story.
“Had you ever met Ippolito before?”
“Once; I had dinner with him.”
“And you’re sure it was him on the phone?”
“I am.”
“Holy shit.”
“You look worried, Hank,” Grant said.
“It’s like this,” Cable said. “I can look into Barone Financial on my own—check out the directors and the employees. If enough of them have records, I can probably get a wiretap order. But I can’t go straight at Safe Harbor or Abalone without support from a lot higher up, and that’s going to take a lot of evidence.”
“If Barone Financial is dirty, won’t that give you what you need to go after Abalone?”
“Maybe, depends how dirty, but you can be sure that if Ippolito and Sturmack are mob, they’re going to ave some distance between them and Barone. It’ll be hard to nail them for one dirty operation; they could lay it off on Barone himself. I’ll bet he doesn’t report to either of the two big guys; there’s got to be a layer in between.”
“What about the raid on Vinnie’s Deli?” Stone asked Grant.
“It’s set for two P.M. tomorrow. We thought it best to go in when the tracks are open.”