“You’re late,” Pinkie said as Scotty took a seat.
“Sorry, boss. I had to check a few things first.”
“What kind of things?”
“I got a call about an hour ago and wanted to make sure what I was told was legit.”
Pinkie waved his fork at Scotty, signaling for him to go on.
“Johnny Fratelli’s been calling people.”
Pinkie cocked his head. “Fratelli?”
“He’s the guy who did time with Eduardo Buono,” Miguel said.
“The guy Buono gave his cut of the JFK job to?”
“No one knows for sure,” Miguel said. “But that’s the rumor.”
“We tried tracking him down, didn’t we?”
Miguel nodded. “A few months after he was released from Sing Sing, but we never found him.”
The heist wouldn’t have been possible without Pinkie loaning Buono half a dozen men. It had seemed like a no-brainer at the time. If the job had succeeded, Pinkie would have received half of what his guys earned on the job and a cool million from Buono as a fee for his services.
While the job went exactly as Buono planned, Pinkie never saw a dime of what was owed him.
“You say Fratelli’s calling people. Why?” Pinkie asked Scotty.
“He thinks someone’s been looking for him, and he wants to know who it was.”
Pinkie glanced at Miguel.
“It’s not us,” Miguel said.
Pinkie turned back to Scotty. “Did he find out who was looking for him?”
“I don’t know,” Scotty said. “I called around and about half the people I talked to had heard from Fratelli directly, but they all swore they told him they didn’t know.”
“Maybe the caller wasn’t Fratelli at all,” Pinkie suggested. “Maybe he was someone pretending to be him.”
“I had the same thought, so I asked about that.” Scotty shrugged. “Everyone swore it was him.”
“Did you talk to Ricky Gennaro?” Miguel asked.
“No. Why? You think he might know?”
“I think it’s possible he’s the one asking about Fratelli.”
Pinkie grimaced. “Gennaro?” But then it hit him. “That son of a bitch. I bet you’re right.”
Scotty looked between the two men. “I don’t get it. Why would it be him?”
“Because he was on the heist with Buono,” Miguel said.
“No shit?” Scotty had been a toddler when the heist occurred, so he only knew about it from when they’d searched for Fratelli several years ago. “I thought Pinkie blackballed everyone who was on the heist.”
“Gennaro was a special case.”
