told him he’d had ten hours of surgery, that three teams of orthopedists and neurosurgeons had spent the night putting his busted face and body back in place. His jaw was wired shut. There was a large pair of wire clippers next to his bed. When he was conscious enough to understand, the trauma nurse told him that if he felt like vomiting from the surgical anesthesia or antibiotics, he should get the clippers and cut his wired jaw open, so that he wouldn’t vomit back into his trachea and lungs and choke to death. It was sobering advice.
He lay in agony for weeks, feeling every inch of his body throb. Even the impressive list of meds he was taking couldn’t completely mask the pain.
The New Jersey State Police transcribed his statement from his hospital room. He talked to them through his wired mouth, forming the words like an amateur ventriloquist. Beano gave his statement under his assumed name, Frank Lemay, because there were three Federal warrants out on him for criminal fraud and various other sophisticated con games. He was also currently on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. It was better if the authorities thought it was Frank Lemay who had been beaten up by Joe Rina. He also didn’t tell them that he had no intention of ever testifying against the handsome mob boss.
His old friend and fellow card sharper “Three Finger” Freddy Feinberg came to visit him in the hospital. The gray-haired card shark looked down in shock at Beano, who was still swollen and discolored like rotting fruit. “Jeez, man, you look like a fucking typhoid victim,” he said. It had been Freddy who arranged for Beano to get in the game. “I told ya, Beano, I told ya, ‘Be careful of that guy Joe Rina.’” And then Three Finger Freddy told him about a rumor that was buzzing around in the street. The word was that Joe Dancer was still pissed and had put out a contract on Frank Lemay, because he had not shown the grace and good sense to die in the country club parking lot like he was supposed to. Three Finger Freddy also told him about how the Rina brothers had taken care of disposal of bodies in the old days. It was another story Beano could have done without hearing.
The police told him that a New Jersey prosecutor named Victoria Hart was coming down to interview him prior to filing the assault-with-intent-to-commit-murder charges against Joseph Rina. Because Joe Rina was a popular tabloid star, the press was swarming to get a story. It was only a matter of time until Beano’s alias would be penetrated, so he disconnected himself from the tangle of electrodes and I.V. bottles and limped out of the hospital. It was a move that saved his life, but he was now poised on the edge of a cliff, overlooking a landscape of revenge and violence that would change him forever.
PART ONE
THE VICTIM
“Never give a sucker an even break.”
-EDWARD FRANCIS ALBEE
ONE
GIRLFRIENDS, A DUMBWAITER, AND A DIXIE CUP
SOME PEOPLE SIMPLY AMAZED VICTORIA HART. TAKE Carol Sesnick … she worked as a pediatric nurse at a local children’s hospital and had been taking night school courses for a year to become certified, hoping to join the profession as a C.N.P., or Certified Nurse Practitioner. What on earth would possess her to risk her life, to put herself in mortal danger, because the People of the great Garden State of New Jersey wanted to put a piece of pond scum like Joe “Dancer” Rina in the yellow brick prison at Rahway? After Carol testified, she would have to be put in the Witness Protection Program. She’d have to live in some icebox state like Minnesota. Her life would be completely changed and arguably ruined. And yet, here she was, risking it all so Victoria Hart, a New Jersey State Prosecutor, could kick some mob ass in court and convict a short, incredibly handsome little creep who walked on his toes. The case is going to be close, Victoria thought, but winnable.
The indictment charged that the thirty-eight-year-old alleged Mafia Don had lost money in a card game in the back room of the Greenborough Country Club. The big winner, a man named Frank Lemay, had been beaten almost to death with a nine-iron in the parking lot as he was getting into his car. Seventy-eight thousand dollars in winnings was stolen from him. And then, before Victoria was assigned to