My Honorable Brother Read online

  The time passed quickly. Before she posed her last key question, Jenna heard a knock on the door and saw Williams look in. She started to get up, but without saying a word, Sacco waved him off. Given a reprieve, she asked the Governor when he expected to announce his intention to seek another term. Sacco didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he arose easily from the sofa and walked toward his desk. Jenna realized that it was a question he wanted to think about without having to sit there, looking at her, while she waited for him to respond.

  She watched as Sacco changed direction and approached the window at the rear of his office with its view of downtown Providence. The way he carried himself forced her to appreciate the fact that he appeared to be in excellent shape for a man whose next birthday would celebrate six full decades of life. Earlier, as she listened to him speak, Jenna concluded that the Governor had a streak of vanity when it came to his appearance. He was well tanned, had several teeth that were obviously capped, giving him a catching smile, and was impeccably groomed. Jenna made a mental note that he was both a smooth talker and a great dresser.

  After contemplating the scene in front of him, Sacco called her over to where he was standing. He pointed at the city skyline a short distance away. “Tell me,” he said, “how many people out there do you think took five seconds today to ask themselves when John Sacco would let them know he’s running again?”

  Richardson knew the question didn’t call for an answer.

  He looked at her and made a zero with his thumb and forefinger. “That many, Miss Richardson, or Jenna, if I may call you that.”

  “Please do,” she replied.

  Sacco moved from the window to his desk and sat down. Jenna took the chair to his left, hoping to continue the interview. He found a thin cigar in the top drawer, tore off the cellophane wrapper and held it between his fingers without making any move to light it.

  “This is step five in the eight step plan I’m on to quit,” he explained. “But then again this is about the fourth different program I’ve been on. I keep telling my wife I should be buying better cigars instead of spending the money looking for a cure.” His laugh showed off his beautiful teeth.

  “The fact is,” he said, turning serious again, “I’ve got much too much work to do to even think about the answer to your question right now. The economy here has improved a little with the changes we’ve been able to make. It’s still what I’d call ‘lousy,’ although thank goodness it’s not nearly as bad as Massachusetts or Connecticut. We’re doing everything we can to find jobs for people and get them off the unemployment rolls. I’ve got law students at ten dollars an hour searching the books for any federal programs we can possibly pull some money out of. I was on the phone half the morning with folks in Washington trying to get some shipbuilding or even ship repair work for Newport. More jobs, Jenna. That’s where all my energies are directed, not worrying about whether or not there’ll be another campaign out there for John Sacco.”

  He stood up again. “And there are a few things I’ve still got to do today,” he said, indicating with a sweep of his arm the piles of paper sitting all over the top of his desk. Richardson got up also, and he walked her to the door. They shook hands and she left.

  He had avoided her question about his candidacy with an answer that he knew would look very good in print if she chose to use it. But he was completely unaware that as Jenna noted down his words, her eye caught the spines of two books on his desk that were otherwise hidden by the papers resting on them. The one on top was entitled, The Committees and Subcommittees of the United States Senate. Under it was a thinner volume called, A Guide to Househunting in Washington, D.C.

  Jenna wondered why Sacco would have those books on his desk. Was he thinking of running for Hardiman’s senate seat? She couldn’t believe the Party would let him run against one of their own, an incumbent. Had someone—maybe even Hardiman—told him that the junior senator from Rhode Island intended to step down after one term? Sonofabitch, Jenna thought to herself, as she looked down the corridor for a public telephone, maybe things are going to get interesting around here after all.

  13

  IT WAS TOMMY ARENA himself who came up with the idea of wearing a beeper whenever he left the office. It had nothing to do with work.

  “What the fuck, I did this job as Secretary Treasurer and business agent of Local 719 for sixteen mother-fucking years before I bought the goddam thing, and anyone who wanted to speak to me bad enough could just leave a fucking message and wait for me to call back.”

  It was because his wife, Theus, suffered a mild stroke a few months earlier and he wanted to be sure she could reach him any time if she needed help. But he found out that the good ones, models that gave a digital readout of the phone number belonging to the person calling him, were costly. So he put the purchase on his expense account and unknowingly impressed one of the auditors at the Teamster Union headquarters in Washington with his efficiency.

  Arena was sixty-three years old and looking forward to retirement in less than two years. He dropped out of school in the middle of the eighth grade, much to the relief of his teachers, and took pleasure in bragging to friends that he never read a book in his life. His parents came to the United States from Sicily and he was the oldest of five children, their only son. He had an olive complexion, with dull, dark brown eyes and thin lips. He rarely smiled, self-conscious of the poor teeth that evidenced his lifelong fear of dentists.

  It was just after ten in the morning when his beeper went off. Arena was sitting with a truck driver in a small office at the J.C. Newton Storage Warehouse. It was a freight forwarding warehouse located a block away from the main post office, just beyond the railroad yards, on the north side of Providence. He got there every Monday morning at seven o’clock and stayed until Newton’s employees, members of his local, started their half hour lunch break at eleven-thirty.

  The office he occupied was one of four that could be reached from a narrow hallway just inside the customer entrance to the building. Anyone wanting access to that area had first to approach the small window located in the outer office and wait for the near-obese woman who worked there to push back the sliding glass panel. Once she learned the visitor’s business, it was her decision whether to press the button that unlocked the door to the corridor.

  Jack Newton, who owned and operated the warehouse, had let Arena use that space to conduct his business for the past two years. The room was empty except for an old walnut stained desk and a heavy wooden chair, painted a shiny black. A single window faced the street. It had no shade or blinds. Layers of dirt screened out the light as the sun passed over that side of the building in the morning. The closest building to the warehouse was at least 200 feet away. Arena wasn’t concerned about being observed there by anyone else.

  The first piece of business he had each Monday morning was with Jack Newton himself. Newton gave Arena a summary of all the freight that was shipped out of the warehouse the prior week. He listed each trucking company that picked up any goods at all, the name of the owner or owner driver, and the total weight of whatever shipments it carried away. Newton then paid Tommy, in cash, two and a half cents for each pound of merchandise that left his premises during those previous five workdays. It was money that bought him protection in the form of Arena’s word that Local 719 warehouse employees would never go on strike. The original rate he was assessed was lowered by a half cent a pound when he agreed to let Tommy have free use of the vacant office to make his other collections.

  Arena spent the rest of the morning in a succession of brief meetings with a representative from each of the trucking companies that were on the list given him by Newton. They came to his office, one by one. Each presented copies of the bills of lading they were given when they picked up freight at the warehouse during the prior week. The rate for each of them was one and a half cents a pound. That gave them the privilege of being allowed to do business with a warehouse represented by Local 719. All payments were also
in cash. Arena made whatever entries he needed for himself on the pages of a large loose-leaf binder. No receipts were ever tendered for the money grudgingly turned over to him.

  Some drivers complained when the totals on their own documents didn’t match the numbers Arena received from Newton. In those cases, Tommy agreed to have the original bills of lading with him the following Monday, but the protesting driver paid what he was told he owed at that time, subject to a later review.

  Every company that handled any shipments out of the Newton warehouse was expected to show up and make its payment that morning. Failure to get there meant a penalty of an additional half-cent per pound when the bill was settled the following week. And at Arena’s discretion, the delinquent driver or company might not receive any calls from Newton that week to pick up freight.

  On Wednesday and Friday mornings Arena dealt with his other two freight-forwarding clients and the trucking companies that made deliveries for them during the previous week. In those cases, he made brief stops to settle accounts with the warehouses and then set up shop in nearby restaurants. Both were owned by friends of his, and neither opened its doors to the public until 11:00 a.m. By that time Tommy completed his collections for the day from the group of drivers and was enjoying a cappuccino before heading back to his office. He made no reduction from the full rate of three cents a pound for the two freight forwarders with whom he did business in this manner.

  Every Friday afternoon, just before five o’clock, a black Jeep Waggoneer pulled into the parking lot next to Local 719’s one-story brick building on Rockville Avenue. Several minutes later, when the Union’s employees left work for the day through the side door that opened on to the lot, one of the women in the group handed the Jeep’s driver a large sealed US Postal Service priority delivery box. Within the hour an accountant at Sal Tarantino’s office was recording its contents.

  The box contained copies of the delivery records given to Arena by the three freight forwarders for the prior week and exactly half the cash he collected. This arrangement, proposed by Tommy and mutually beneficial to both him and the Tarantinos, was in effect for a number of years. Sal Tarantino didn’t like it, but couldn’t turn it down. At the time he found himself in need of a greater cash flow to continue his investments in legitimate businesses. He reluctantly agreed to offer whatever physical protection Arena needed in lining up the freight forwarders and trucking companies for their weekly contributions.

  Tarantino comforted himself with the thought that he would drop out of this line of business as soon as the Family’s finances improved. But it was put off from one year to the next in exchange for other “favors” he was able to extract from Tommy’s local of the Teamsters. The Tarantino Family didn’t have to work hard for its share of what Arena collected. Its only obligation was to convince a recalcitrant trucker, now and then, to complain less and have his payments in on time.

  Arena was in the middle of a transaction at the J.C. Newton warehouse when the beeper went off. He saw that the call was from his office and ignored it. Instead, he continued counting the money handed to him by one of the drivers on his schedule. After the driver entered his initials on the sheet listing the name of his company, Arena scribbled his own “TA” next to it and told his visitor to have a great day.

  Arena’s secretary had standing instructions not to bother him on Monday, Wednesday or Friday mornings. He told her that he’d always get to the office on those days shortly after noon, and he always did. None of the other business agents in Local 719 knew his beeper number.

  “What the fuck does she want?” he said out loud. The words came from deep in his throat and just managed to slip out. He considered whether he should ask the fat girl out front—Marlene, her name was—if there was another office he could use that had a phone. His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. Another paying customer came in.

  “Hiya, Gus,” Tommy said. “Out on the road today, huh?” He looked for G&G Trucking on the list. They were one of the larger freight carriers that delivered in Rhode Island. Arena’s local represented G&G’s drivers. He remembered that in the last contract negotiations Gus did a lot of crying about the money his company was losing. Eventually, Arena agreed to let G&G pay its drivers twenty-five cents an hour less than the going rate. He also conceded Gus the right for management personnel to make pickups and deliveries on days that Local 719 drivers missed work. But he absolutely refused to accept anything less for Teamster pension fund contributions than the amount he received from every owner of a unionized carrier. There were no exceptions, he told Gus, “none, none, none.” If anyone had to get hurt, it wasn’t going to be the Union. There were too many people in the Teamster hierarchy waiting to carve that pension pie into slices. Tommy wasn’t about to start making excuses to any of them.

  “Why the hell don’t you get another chair in here, Tommy?”

  Gus Bagdasarian hated Arena’s guts, and having to stand while being forced to pay over money his company couldn’t afford made him seethe with anger. “The bastard makes me feel like shit, George,” he told his cousin and partner the same day. “I’d kill him if I thought I could get away with it.”

  “Take your fucking complaints to Jack Newton,” Arena answered. “He does all my interior decorating.”

  The beeper sounded again. He looked at it right away and saw his office number in bright red digits on the screen.

  “I gotta go deliver another fucking baby,” he said. “Stick your initials right there and I’ll see you next Monday.”

  He followed Bagdasarian out the door and down the hall. Marlene told him he could use her phone but to make it quick. “This better be good,” he told his secretary when she apologized for disturbing him.

  “Mr. Sileo called,” she blurted out. “He said you should get back to him as soon as possible. And you should tell his secretary to interrupt him if he’s in a meeting.”

  She gave him the number in Washington and he hung up. Tommy stood there, wondering whether he had done anything lately that the big boys could consider a screw-up. Armand Sileo was the International Vice President of the Teamsters.

  * * *

  “The news isn’t good, Tommy,” Armand Sileo told Arena, “but it isn’t necessarily bad. The feds are going to start checking you out, along with a couple of business agents in Albany. You know what they’re looking for—just to see if any of you guys are holding hands with organized crime. If you’re clean, you’ve got nothing to worry about and there’ll never be any charges. If they find something and want to start digging deeper, you’ll have to get your own lawyer. Under the settlement agreement the International made with the Justice Department, we couldn’t pick up a nickel of the cost, you know that. You’re okay, aren’t you Tommy? No shit in any closets if they open the doors?”

  Arena answered without any hesitation. “They got nothing on me, Armand. I don’t even know who’s running things up on fucking Federal Hill anymore. It’ll just be a waste of fucking time and money.”

  “Good, Tommy, I’m glad to hear it. Call me if you need me.” Sileo wasn’t interested in hearing anything else.

  Arena put down the phone. He walked back to the office and looked outside through the dirt encrusted window. “What a fucking way to start the week,” he grunted.

  He knew the Teamsters settled the federal case against them to avoid a major trial that could have destroyed the Union if the Government proved its allegations. Since then, at least sixteen officers were brought up on charges and forced to resign as a result of their association with known mobsters. “Billy’s blunder” was what most of the locals across the country called the deal their president, William McDevitt, signed with the Justice Department. It started a groundswell to keep him from being reelected at the next Teamster convention.

  A judge in New York with an impeccable record of fairness was put in charge of the whole investigation. Anyone found guilty at trial of having mob connections could appeal to that judge and hope to get t
he local decision reversed and thrown out. But there was a Catch 22 in the appeals process. If the judge upheld the verdict, the Teamster representative not only had to resign from office but forfeit whatever Union pension he had coming.

  “Not one fucking cent of retirement income,” Arena whispered. He inhaled and let out a long deep breath. He sure as fuck didn’t want to see that happen to him, he thought. All of a sudden Tommy didn’t feel too good about his collection business.

  14

  WITHIN THE SAME HOUR that Arena was returning the call to Sileo, two other important phone calls were made from exchanges in Providence to numbers in Washington.

  Jenna Richardson had contacted a few sources and snooped around in some of the places Jim Callum first brought her, where good alcohol usually loosened a few tongues. But she was unable to find anyone who heard even an inkling of a rumor that Spence Hardiman might not be running to keep his Senate seat. Still, she was convinced that the books she saw on John Sacco’s desk weren’t just some kind of coincidence. He had to have a reason for reading them, she felt. Finally, with no one else to try and pry information from, Richardson decided to go straight to the horse’s mouth.

  Senator Hardiman’s secretary continued editing a document in her word processor as she listened to Jenna identify herself and ask for just one minute of the Senator’s time. She replied, as she always did when someone from the media called, “I’m not sure whether the Senator will be able to interrupt what he’s doing and come to the phone, Miss Richardson.”

  He did. He was bright and cheery. “I hope Walter Mullins is recovering nicely from his operation,” he said. Mullins was the Herald publisher. “How can I help you?” he asked.