Tags:
Fiction,
Literary,
thriller,
Greed,
Crime,
Family,
Mafia,
Novel,
organized crime,
Capitalism,
money,
secrets,
Mistaken Identity,
power,
Ohio,
Cleveland
from Lisbon to New York after having gone by train from Spain to Portugal. At least one man has died. Well, a lot more than thatâmen, women, and childrenâand a lot more death is coming. But weâre not ready for that.
The police in five countries all have just a small piece of whatâs going on. In Granada, theyâre examining the break-in at Peterâs apartment, wondering where the tenant has gone, wondering what kind of man lives like he does. In Ukraine, local, state, and international authorities have noted the appearance of the two Americans, and their disappearance, too. But Curly and Petey donât seem important enough to distract them from much bigger problems, or to find out where they went. In Cleveland, the police know the most. Just like Kosookyy hoped, the FBIâs got files on him and all his buddies; they have a pretty good sense of what theyâre all up to. Itâs been that way at least since the Organized Crime Control Act got passed in 19 70 , when the feds started being able to prosecute RICO casesâafter the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, for the people out there taking score at home. See, for the FBI to bust a bunch of guys at once, itâs not enough that those guys are just doing bad things. The FBI needs to show that those guys are, you know, organized. That they know each other, work together. That thereâs a hierarchy, a system, people giving orders, people taking orders. So theyâve been collecting that kind of information for years, for at least a generation. Then they wait until the smoking gun appears, or until something bigâs about to happen, something big and bad enough that they can bring everyone in and put them away for a long time. They work, these RICO cases, and the Cleveland FBI office has done some good busts. Theyâve gotten Angelo Lonardo, who started off in 1929 by killing the people who killed his father, just a year after the big Mafia convention at the Hotel Statler, and risen to run the Mafia rackets in all northeast Ohio by 1980 . They got Joseph Gallo, Frederick Graewe, and Kevin McTaggart, too. Drug running, murder, a bunch of other charges. Twenty-five federal convictions and twenty state ones. Just a couple years ago, they started going international. Theyâre investigating a Taiwanese company for stealing trade secrets from an Ohio glue factory; theyâll gather enough to convict the companyâs president, along with his daughter, in 1999 . Theyâre doing a lot of drug cases; theyâll do a lot of cyber crime. And by 1995 theyâve learned a couple things that donât make them very happy.
Agents George Guarino and Anne Easton have been put onto the Cleveland officeâs organized crime investigations, Easton because sheâs smart, Guarino because heâs almost as smart and knows a thing or two about Cleveland; he grew up around here. Weâre in the days before September 11 , before organized crime takes a backseat to terrorism in the FBIâs priorities. So Guarino and Easton have some bureau money to spend. Theyâve set up a nice little network of informants, theyâve been doing surveillance. They know the restaurant Petey and Curly visited, though they didnât see them go in there. They know the man who owns the place and have been tracing the connectionsâof money, for the most part, because itâs all about money, right?âback to Russia and Eastern Europe, to someone, or something, called the Wolf. They know about a rival international group, whose Cleveland contact appears to be a man named Feodor. They know about someone called the White Lady, who theyâre pretty sure lives in town, appears to have connections to a few different organizations, including Feodorâs and the Wolfâsâas if sheâs playing a few sides at once. But theyâre not sure why sheâd do that, or even who she is. Theyâre just
Elaine Golden
T. M. Brenner
James R. Sanford
Guy Stanton III
Robert Muchamore
Ally Carter
James Axler
Jacqueline Sheehan
Belart Wright
Jacinda Buchmann