Murder Machine by Gene Mustain

Author:Gene Mustain [Mustain, Gene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: An Onyx Book
Published: 1993-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Body Shop

The terrible thing about 1979, the worst year of the DeMeo crew, was that even with the bloody torrent preceding and including Dominick Ragucci and Chris Rosenberg, the year was less than half over. Bouncing back fast, Roy plunged down a bloody road. He picked Joey Testa to replace Chris as his new right hand, not that he did not like equally capable Henry Borelli, but Roy felt a closer bond to Joey, a former apprentice butcher too, and now, like him, a professional. He fit the last pieces of his car deal together, but did not neglect other deals, all of which led him—and Nino—to yet more heinous murders and one of them, finally, to jail.

Henry was bitterly disappointed when Roy chose younger Joey over him, but Roy quickly sought to soothe his wounded feelings. While Joey and Anthony were given responsibility for moving all the stolen Cuban cocaine, Roy gave Henry a big job in the Kuwait stolen-car operation. Without having to do a lot of work, Henry was made one of the deal’s five active partners.

The operation had been in abeyance several months while another partner, a Long Island used-car dealer, concocted a satisfactory scheme for shipping the cars under another man’s freight-forwarding company. The dealer was Ronald Ustica, a thirty-four-year-old lifelong resident of Baldwin, Long Island, who met Roy while selling cars for another used-car lot whose owner was perpetually in debt to Roy’s book. Ustica was mild-mannered, recently married, and had little in common with Roy and the crew except a larcenous heart.

He and Roy came up with the scheme after he met two Arab importers who came to New York as partners to buy secondhand cars for resale in Kuwait. In discussions, Ustica discovered that one partner, Abdullah Hassan, had the same larcenous flaw as he. Encouraged by Roy, Ustica told the importers he could provide many quality used cars at five thousand dollars each, if they did not mind that they were stolen. Sure he could resell the cars for at least twice as much in Kuwait, Hassan did not mind. His partner, however, did, and they split up with the partner vowing to stay in New York and put his own legitimate deal together. Hassan returned to Kuwait to await the cars.

As he had already indicated he would, Roy also brought Freddy into the deal and, because Freddy’s stumblebum brother, Richie, had shown such ambition in the Joey Scorney murder, him also. Roy informed Freddy that a full sixth share of the profit would have to go to Nino and the “hill,” meaning Paul Castellano, whose new white house occupied a Staten Island knoll known as Todt Hill (Todt meaning “death” in Dutch).

Roy gave the active partners specific roles. Richie, aided by Vito Arena at one hundred dollars per vehicle, would steal the cars; Freddy, in his shop, would replace the locks; together, the brothers would make and install the phony VIN plates, using tool dies Roy had acquired and

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