Carla sighed with relief. She knew she should have guessed that Don would eventually figure out what she was doing based on their previous discussions about Patty. “Thank you. I really appreciate it...”
“Well, now, don't go appreciatin' it too much yet,” Don continued, “'cause for this to work, you gotta give me somethin'. I know you can't talk about these secret excursions of yours, but the taped conversations you've sent in from your meetings with Gio an' Mario have given us precisely squat, an' the folks upstairs are gettin' a mite restless.”
Carla raised her eyebrows. “Why the hell would they be getting restless already? Fred was undercover for seven months—I've barely been undercover for three weeks!”
“Yeah, but Fred's career was also a damn sight longer than yours,” Don said, “so he had a lot more credit in the bank where them boys were concerned.”
“Plus he was a man,” Carla pointed out sourly.
“Well, you said it, not me,” Don agreed mildly. “But you gotta give me somethin' I can put in a report, darlin'. Anythin' that makes it look like we might be makin' progress here, so I can get 'em to back off while you're...doin' what you're doin'.”
“It's been pretty tricky,” she said. “Gio's running the restaurant clean, and I can't suggest that he do otherwise without having the case thrown out due to entrapment. He'd made a few half-assed references to collecting money from low-level pot dealers and that kind of thing, but it's nothing any decent lawyer couldn't get him out of if we busted him for that.”
“What about Mario? Have you gotten close enough to get anything on him?”
“Mario's doing a good job of isolating his rackets from Gio's,” Carla answered. “I think he's worried Gio might get sloppy and trip him up somehow. And believe me, Gio knows his dad doesn't trust or respect him, and he resents the fuck out of it.”
“Can we use that somehow?” Don asked. “If Gio ain't a fan of his old man, can we maybe get him to flip?”
Carla thought this over. “It's possible, but it's still a bit of a stretch. Even though Gio hates his father and isn't that interested in the gangster life, with these Sicilians, family is everything. We'd need something heavy to hold over Gio's head to get him to rat out Mario. Unless...”
“Unless what?” Don prodded her.
“Hey, Don, are you in front of your computer right now?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Okay, good. I need you to look into the files on Mario, going back twenty or thirty years. See if you can find anything at all about someone named Salvatore who he'd have been associated with around that time. Personally, not professionally.”
“Good thing you narrowed it down,” Don grunted. Carla heard his fingers clacking on the keyboard in the background. “What's this about, hon?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “But it seemed like it was worrying the hell out of Gio, so maybe it'll give us something to go on. I know it's a longshot, but...”
“Better than nothing, right,” Don agreed. “Good thing the Bureau got around to scanning all these old reports and handwritten case notes last year, or else I'd be up to my elbows in file boxes an' dust bunnies. Even so, this is gonna be like lookin' for a damn needle in a...”
Don's voice suddenly cut off, just as his keyboard fell silent.
“Don't tell me you found something already,” Carla asked hopefully.
“Oh yeah,” he replied. “Turns out ol' Mario didn't have a lot of friends or family named Salvatore, an' the note that one of the original agents clipped to this old file is, wow...kind of a doozy.”
“Don't keep me in suspense,” she urged. “Who was it?”
Don took a deep breath. “Well, according to this, when Mario first got married to his wife Allegra a little over thirty years ago, she wasn't able to get pregnant. Since Mario's old school an' havin' kids is a sign of virility to those folks, he kept it as quiet as possible while they tried to find the right fertility treatments for Allegra. 'Cept in the meantime, Mario goes an' gets some mistress of his pregnant.”
“Jesus,” Carla said. “And since Mario's Catholic...”
“Yep, no trip to the clinic for her,” said Don. “Mario hushes it up, gives her a boatload of money, an' sends her off to raise the kid somewhere far away. He figures that's the end of that, an' after a bunch more years, he an' Allegra find the right doctor an' manage to have a kid of their own.”
“Gio,” she said.
“Give the little lady a cigar,” Don agreed. “But then about four years later, some punk teenager named Salvatore shows up in Chicago an' starts braggin' about how Mario's his father, an' how he's gonna join the Mancinis an' take over for Mario someday 'cause it's his birthright. Looks like Mario tried real hard to quiet the kid down an' make him understand that he wasn't never gonna acknowledge him publicly, what with him bein' illegitimate an' all. But Sal wouldn't listen, an' he even showed up at the house on one occasion...”