The Dry Cleaner: A Rich Vitelli Mystery

By Gene Masters

When clients want a body to totally dissapear from the face of the Earth, they cll upon the services of "The Dry Cleaner." There are no bones, no skin, no teeth, no pesky fingerprints - not even metal replacement body parts. And, best of all, there's no DNA left behind. It's as if the person never ever existed. What's more, for special clients―and the right price―The Dry Cleaner can deliver the total package: a clean kill and an untraceable disposal of the remains. It's only when Metro Police Detective Rich Vitelli is tasked with investigating the mysterious disappearance of real estate tycoon Harry Cady Dealey that his and The Dry Cleaner's paths finally cross. Without an actual corpus delicti, it's up to Vitelli to piece together the clues he uncovers along the way, involving organized crime, a disgruntled wife

and her lover―and, of course, The Dry Cleaner. The story is told from the perspective of both Vitelli and The Dry Cleaner, with an unexpected complication leading to a totally unexpected ending that will leave readers shaking their heads in amusement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gene Masters
• Release date: Sep 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215858103

Book preview

The Dry Cleaner

A Rich Vitelli Mystery

By

Gene Masters

Published by Escarpment Press

The Dry Cleaner: A Rich Vitelli Mystery

Copyright © 2021 Gene Masters

FIRST EDITION

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This book is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the express permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.

This book may not be reproduced in print, electronically, or in any other format, without the express written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts for publicity purposes.

Cover artwork:

ID: 1253364520 abstract vector blood splatter design

Copyright © 2021 Shutterstock Mrspopman 1985

ID: 271901492 Shirt and hanger hang on a paul

Copyright © 2021 Shutterstock Kai Keisuke

Published in the United States of America by

Escarpment Press, Indian Land, SC

Table of Contents

The Dry Cleaner 1

The Dry Cleaner 2

Vitelli 1

The Dry Cleaner 3

The Dry Cleaner 4

The Dry Cleaner 5

The Dry Cleaner 6

The Dry Cleaner 7

The Dry Cleaner 8

The Dry Cleaner 9

The Dry Cleaner 10

The Dry Cleaner 11

The Dry Cleaner 12

The Dry Cleaner 13

The Dry Cleaner 14

Vitelli 2

Vitelli 3

Vitelli 4

Vitelli 5

Vitelli 6

Vitelli 7

Vitelli 8

The Dry Cleaner 15

The Dry Cleaner 16

The Dry Cleaner 17

The Dry Cleaner 18

The Dry Cleaner 19

The Dry Cleaner 20

The Dry Cleaner 21

The Dry Cleaner 22

The Dry Cleaner 23

The Dry Cleaner 24

The Dry Cleaner 25

The Dry Cleaner 26

Vitelli 9

Vitelli 10

The Dry Cleaner 27

Vitelli 11

Vitelli 12

Vitelli 13

Vitelli 14

Vitelli 15

Vitelli 16

Vitelli 17

Vitelli 18

Vitelli 19

Vitelli 20

Vitelli 21

Vitelli 22

Vitelli 23

Vitelli 24

Vitelli 25

Vitelli 26

Vitelli 27

Vitelli 28

Vitelli 29

The Dry Cleaner 28

About the Author

The Dry Cleaner 1

THEY CALL ME THE dry cleaner, and I’m a professional.  To the outside world, I’m a successful business person—strictly legit. I inherited a dry-cleaning business when my adopted parents were killed: several storefronts franchised out around the city, and a centrally-located factory, which does the actual dry cleaning (I also now own the patent for the dry-cleaning process we use).  The factory runs two shifts, five days a week.  In the beginning, I ran the business myself, but now, since I pursue a more interesting line of business, it’s run by professional managers.

Besides owning the dry-cleaning business, I’m also a licensed private investigator, or P.I.  I have a shoebox office, complete with everything—everything, that is, except actual clients.  My office phone goes straight to voice mail, and every weekday I politely return all my calls, and say I can’t take their jobs at the moment, and refer the callers to one of a dozen or so PIs on my contacts list.   One of the good things about having a PI license, though, is that I get the state-required carry permit for a concealed firearm, and can snoop on people without alarming the powers that be.  The other is that I can launder some of my otherwise illegally obtained earnings through the PI firm.  That way, I get some cash to live on, while I’m saving everything else for my eventual, very comfortable seaside retirement.

What I really do for a living, my more interesting line of business, is that I make people disappear.  No, not like witness protection.  I mean disappear—as in permanently—as in gone from the face of the Earth.

I didn’t make much for each job the first few times out, but, as I built up a reputation for cleanliness and efficiency, my fee per job mounted, and now I get $150,000 per person for an occasional full-service contract, and, yeah, I’ve had contracts for a few targets.  Full service means I handle everything—including the hit.  Almost all of my mob jobs involve only getting rid of the corpse, however, which makes me a cleaner.  Of course that’s cheaper—only $75,000.  But I never really got into the business for the money, although, occasionally, my mob-connected jobs come with some excellent benefits.

I work strictly off referrals.  There are plenty of middlemen around, almost always mob-connected, who can put a client and me together.  Of course, they usually claim a fee of their own from the client, but that’s none of my business.  I don’t care how much they get, just so long as I get mine.  But I hear my go-betweens don’t do squat for less than ten large.

Tony I. is, by far, my most frequent contact with the mob guys who had already given me more than a few of my earlier clients.  Truth be told, it was Tony who set me up in this business to begin with, and it was Tony who first called me that typical sticky early August afternoon.

Hey, he said, it’s Tony.  Call me.  Then, he hung up.

Tony’s return number was a burner phone.  It’s understood that I always answer on another burner.  That way, communications can’t be traced to either of us.   There isn’t much any possible prying eyes can do, since we both destroy our phones right after each call.

Hey Tony!  Whatcha got?

Speaking on the burner, Tony talked specifics.  Got a job for you, Lee, a matter of company discipline, ya know?   (That meant there had been a mob hit.)  I need to deliver the package tonight. And that meant he had a stiff for me to dispose of, and had to drop it off that night.

Okay, Tony.  Midnight okay?

Works for me. See ya.

Scratch another set of burner phones.

Used to be the mob would hit a guy and be very messy, and very public, about it.  The idea was to send a message to the other mobsters that a line had been crossed, and that was what happened to anyone who crossed the line.  No more. Today, the message is the same, but the execution (no pun intended) is more subtle.  When someone just disappears, and is never heard from again, the message may not be as spectacular, but it gets out almost as quickly, and is actually just as effective.  The police don’t get nearly as worked up over a missing person’s case as they do with a homicide—and  the media ignore it altogether.

Tony I. handled quite a few mob disposals for our little corner of the state, and for nearby sections of the six surrounding states.  He alone could keep me pretty busy, what with the local stiffs, and some even shipped in from farther out-of-state.  At least one pop a month, sometimes as many as three, if the troops were really unruly. And at seventy-five grand a pop, I can’t complain, and, like I said, it was never about the money, anyway.

Tony showed up on time at my place that night.  My place is my otherwise legit, central, dry-cleaning establishment on the outskirts of the city.  I have a small corner of the basement set up for my little sideline enterprise, and my managers understand that nobody but me goes in there—ever!  Not that the place wouldn’t look innocent enough (unless they happened in on me while a disposal was in progress), but you never knew.

Tony delivered the stiff in a body bag, all zippered up, nice and clean, which made things very easy for me.  We loaded it into a laundry cart, then Tony left, and I wheeled the cart back to my shop.

Back to TOC

The Dry Cleaner 2

NOW THERE ARE LOTS of ways to dispose of bodies, but most bodies are still found—eventually.  And these days, what with DNA analysis and all, bodies that are found are eventually identified. From there, a smart detective can usually figure out who wanted that person dead, and, even though most murders go unsolved, things can still get dicey for the actual murderer.  But, if a body is never found— not ever —then, murder, while possibly suspected, can almost never be actually proven.  And that’s where I come in.

There are lots of ways to make a body disappear entirely.  One way, for instance, is the way the Argentinian military did it in the late 70s and early 80s: Just drop an inconvenient corpse in the middle of the ocean, and do it so far out that it’ll never, ever reach the shore.  Of course, if one of them ever did wash up (and I don’t know that that ever happened), then there would still be that pesky DNA to deal with.  In any case, I don’t own a plane, or even a boat, and I’m not even near an actual ocean, so, for me, that method is a non-starter.

By far the best way to make a body disappear is to destroy its DNA entirely—getting rid of all its DNA forever.  And if you want to destroy a body’s DNA entirely, there are two methods that work: total immolation (fire) or acid.

Total immolation isn’t as easy to achieve as the average person might think.  Your average crematorium actually does a piss-poor job of getting rid of a body.  There are still bits of bone left, and usually some teeth to go with the remaining cinders.  I’ve read that heat destroys all DNA over 375 degrees Fahrenheit, but if there have been any joint replacements, they don’t burn up, and they come with traceable serial numbers.  Now, if you have access to a blast furnace, or a high-fire kiln that will melt away any metals, this method might work—but I don’t know exactly where you’d find one of either of those in this city.

That leaves acid.

It has to be the right acid, of course, but the right acid is ridiculously easy to come by.  That would be fluorosilicic acid.  Sulfuric won’t do; it eats the flesh, but leaves the bones.  Hydrochloric is too weak, and nitric is too slow.  It has to be fluorosilicic.  It’s used, mostly, to fluoridate public water supplies; but it requires special piping, because it eats right through regular metal pipes.  It’s very corrosive, and, really, will eat its way through just about anything—even glass.  The one thing it won’t eat through is plastic.  A bath of this stuff, added to the right amount of water in a polyethylene tub, will turn an entire body into jelly in a couple hours—flesh, teeth, bones, metal joint repairs, everything.  Then you just neutralize what’s left with enough caustic soda, and wash the whole mess down the sewer.  Job done.

And that’s exactly what happened with the stiff Tony delivered that night.

Back to TOC

Vitelli 1

DETECTIVE RICHARD VITELLI HAD been with the city’s Metro Police Department for sixteen years.  He had started out as a beat cop in the city’s skid row district by the railyards, and had worked his way up from there, first in the robbery division, and, later, after he made lieutenant, in missing persons.  Vitelli liked working missing persons.  Mostly, it was below the radar, with little fanfare.  A goodly number of the cases were about people who eventually showed up by themselves: children who had wandered off but were eventually found; teenagers who had run away from home and then thought better of it; dementia patients who got lost but were eventually found by family members, that kind of thing.  But there were also many who disappeared, and were never heard from again, and, unfortunately, some really nasty, high-profile cases where only bodily remains were recovered.

Then there was the fact that very few of the people in MP had any mob connections.

Vitelli had figured in the recent big MP case involving the disappearance of a three-year-old boy, Cody Hanley, from his home in South Lakeside, one of the more well-to-do sections of the city.  He had made the assumption that the boy had first wandered off while his mother was preoccupied for just a few minutes, and then had been abducted by some predator seizing on a suddenly-presented opportunity.  It had been, admittedly, a worst-case scenario, but it became more and more prophetic as the hours since the initial disappearance wore on past the first forty-eight.

Vitelli organized a house-to-house police inquiry throughout the neighborhood, and recruited citizen volunteer teams to conduct searches of the surrounding woods and culverts.

One neighbor had reported a suspicious gray van cruising the neighborhood the week before, and, again, on the day of the boy’s disappearance.  Another thought he had seen the boy wandering down a street several blocks from his home.  Based upon that report, Vitelli widened the search area.  The boy’s body was discovered two days afterward, stuffed in a stormwater culvert, just seven blocks from his home.  He had been sexually abused and strangled.

Vitelli’s Catholic upbringing kicked in then, filled him with disgust for anyone who could do such a thing to a child (the child-abuse scandal in the church had been just another excuse for Vitelli to quit going to Sunday Mass).  He vowed to find the person who did this thing, and put him away for the rest of his life.

There had been a severe thunderstorm two nights before the body was discovered (over an inch of rain had fallen), and whatever evidence that might have clung to the body was most likely washed away.  No foreign DNA was found in any of the body cavities. 

What followed was a culling of known sex offenders residing in the city and surrounding suburbs.  Particular attention was paid to anyone owning a van, and a half-dozen suspects were called in.  Vitelli personally questioned each of the men in turn.

The fourth interview was with a registered predator who had already served time for soliciting young boys online, and for being in possession of a large child pornography collection.  Earl Cullen was college graduate with a degree in social psychology.   He had been a state welfare worker at the time of his arrest, but had been only been able to find work as a day laborer since his release from prison.  And prison had been rough on him—sexual predators were the frequent targets for physical abuse by their fellow prisoners, and Cullen was no exception.

Vitelli started off the interview with Cullen the same way he had started off the previous three.

You know, Earl, we have your DNA on file, and, when the coroner’s report comes back, all we have to do is match it up with the DNA found on the body.

Cullen snickered. Good luck with that, Detective, ‘cause if I did it, I’d have used a condom.

College education notwithstanding,