The King of Con by Thomas Giacomaro

Author:Thomas Giacomaro [Thomas Giacomaro]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781944648039
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.

Passport stamped at Jan Smuts International Airport in Johannesburg, February 1992

“Tommy, the FBI are all over the place turning everybody and everything upside down,” she whispered. “They’re investigating all of your friends. They’re watching me and your father.”

I wasn’t sure if she was whispering so my father wouldn’t hear, or because she thought the phone was tapped. I’m sure my father was beating the shit out of her more than usual because of the new, even bigger shame I’d brought on the family.

In the year leading up to my Valentine’s Day massacre, I’d left those 20,000 people out of work and billions of dollars missing from all over the place. Now, the FBI descended and grabbed anyone associated with me—asking questions and gathering testimonies. All my friends and colleagues were calling my mother, she whispered—Teddy Duanno, Patsy Giglio, Stevie Moretti, Tina, Miguel the driver, Maggie my bookkeeper . . . the list went on and on. I hadn’t told anyone I was leaving; I just vanished. After I left, any business I was still connected to collapsed.

Like Tina said once, it was like a napalm bomb had detonated.

Everyone was looking for me and screaming at each other: Is he dead? Where is he? What is going on?

But mostly, my former colleagues and the FBI wanted to know: Where the fuck was all that money?

“I don’t know!” my mother answered, over and over, to every question. “I don’t know, I don’t know!” And it’s true, she didn’t. Except for the suitcases of cash I’d hidden in the basement.

I sat back in my subtropical paradise eight thousand miles away, drunkenly looking at my waterfall, and for the first time in a long time I felt regret—mostly for myself. I’d been on top of the dog-shit pile with Zitani and I’d let it all collapse. Why?

Then I worried that everyone was gonna rat on me and fry me. I had set up Camino, Barnetas, and Kapralos to do the dirty work, and their names were on all the official paperwork. But by now, after a year of surveillance, the FBI would know I was, as always, the mastermind behind all the bullying, buying, looting, and busting. Enzo taught me, but I was a student who surpassed his master. I manipulated them all, and that’s what they’re all gonna fucking say when they rat.

Maggie was the only one who knew about my overseas accounts and where I kept the file with my meticulous, handwritten records. When the FBI brought her in and interrogated her, she wasted no time telling them where all the money was and, yes, she’d show them everything if it meant saving her own ass. But when she went to look for the file in the Clifton office, it wasn’t there—I’d cleaned everything out weeks before I left. Now Maggie looked the dummy and she made the FBI look like dummies, too. Humiliating the FBI was the worst thing you could do. They fried her for it.

By the time Maggie and

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.