Mob Rules

by Marc Rainer

  “And with Peck’s character sent packing for making the same mistakes as his predecessor.”

  “Right again.” Barrett sat back down behind the desk. “I’ll be honest with you. I never asked for this job, and I don’t know why I was picked for it. I was happy as a pig running our satellite office in Jeff City. I get a call from the AG, saying that he—not one of the senators—was recommending that I get the assignment. You know that’s a change in protocol, right?”

  “Sure. Usually it’s a political favor to one of the state’s party bigwigs. If us worker bees are lucky, it’s someone with at least some prosecution experience in one of the county jobs. Lots of times, there’s not even that.” Barrett nodded. “Anyway, I agreed to take it. I think the AG and his team had seen some things on one of their inspection visits that needed addressing, and they wanted someone who knew the office but who wasn’t one of the ruling cliques, either in this office or the Jackson County machine. KC is located in Jackson County, and that prosecutor’s office has been a feeder league for us here for years. Some of the folks who got promoted in this office earned their jobs, but some got supervisory slots based on who they’d known and for how long, and they ended up bombing their own troops. If we were back in Peck’s command, I think the correct quadrant for me to address those issues would be the second.”

  “Some things going right, but a lot of others that need some attention?” Trask asked.

  “Yes, and one of those things has been the former SLC, which is why I want you to take the job. For one thing, you’ve got the résumé. For another thing, it will appear to be—because it is—a merit-based assignment to the rest of the team, and not one based on years in this office or in the Jackson County system. The last guy—Marshall Peters, he’s out looking for work now—thought of himself as Doctor Death. He was obsessed with getting a death-penalty conviction, didn’t want to fool with a case unless it had been certified capital, worked his second chairs like slaves while he looked in the mirror all day, and wouldn’t take a case to trial unless the investigators had everything perfectly wrapped up and bow-tied. I couldn’t stand him. You’ll benefit by comparison immediately, so don’t think that everyone will hate you out of the gate.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  Barrett stood up, walked around the desk, and offered his hand.

  “This time it’s for real, then, Jeff. Welcome to the office.”

  “I accept,” Trask said, shaking his new boss’s hand.

  “Wonderful. I have three more stops for you to make today. First, Cam has a treat in mind for you for lunch. Second, he’ll be taking you to one of the investigative units that you’ll be working with the most, and third—assuming you don’t have one lined up already—I think he has a realtor for you. You’re flying back tomorrow?”

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  “Even better! You may have time to pick out a house before you leave.”

  Trask laughed. “That realtor better be very good.”

  “We have some great areas in the metro here. I’m sure you’ll find something fairly quickly. It’s a buyer’s market now.”

  Trask turned and left the office. Cam Turner met him in the hallway.

  “I hope you’re hungry, hero.”

  Kansas City, Missouri

  Sergeant Micky McPhail of the Kansas City Police Department’s homicide unit stood in front of the tree line above the riverbank as the winch on a tow truck pulled the car out of the water. They were about half a mile downstream from the Chouteau Bridge, a span over the Missouri named for a fur trapper who was believed to have been the city’s first permanent resident.

  McPhail shrugged. “Just like the tip said: blue Ford Focus. Plates are registered to Joseph Gonzalez—the same Joey Gonzalez found in his apartment with two bullet holes in his head, just like his brother.”

  “And the tip came over the hotline,” Tom Land thought out loud. “No request for a reward?”

  “Yep. Totally anonymous. The caller said that he’d seen the car in the driveway of John Porcello’s house the night Big John and Margie bought it. Next thing you know we get a separate call—different voice entirely—saying that he’d seen somebody pushing this car into the river. We got here pretty fast. The thing hung up on some brush and didn’t go all the way in. Lucky for us. If it had gone down, we might never have found it. The current here is pretty strong, and it’s so dark our best dive team can’t see shit at the bottom.”

  “Thanks for calling me, Mick. I’m still wondering, though. No mention of Little Dom in either tip? You saw the video from the casino. The Gonzalez boys followed Dom around like he was their guru. Do we really think they broke off that night and did Big John on their own? Dom wasn’t involved at all?”

  McPhail shook his head. “Doesn’t make much sense to me either, but for now, it’s all we have to go on.”

  “So, what’s your working theory? Who do you call in?” Land had done a stint in homicide before moving to the Career Criminal Unit. “You obviously can’t talk to the Gonzalez boys now about Dom.”

  “We can still talk to Dom about the Gonzalez boys,” McPhail said, shrugging again.

  “Good luck with that.”

  “Yeah, I know. We’ll do better to get his story, assume the opposite is true, and work from there: that is, if he’ll talk to us at all. If we hit him at the bar—his turf—maybe he’ll be his usual cocky little asshole self and won’t lawyer up.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Land said. “Let’s see: Fat Tony’s sister and brother-in-law—a made guy—get whacked, and then the two wannabes who a secret tipster said were good for it, go down themselves and their car gets rolled into the river.”

  “We’ve got a gun!” One of McPhail’s detectives shouted from the riverbank, leaning into the car’s open door.

  “Let me guess. Forty cal?” McPhail yelled back.

  The detective swept some debris off the surface of the weapon with a finger. “Yeah. Glock forty!”

  McPhail looked at Land and shook his head. “Wanna bet ballistics confirms it? That’ll be the gun that killed Porcello and Marge.”

  “This stinks,” Land said.

  “It smells like a frame,” McPhail agreed. “Either that or Fat Tony found out who did his sister, had someone take care of it, and decided to bury the gun with the car.”

  “Maybe the Gonzalez boys were worried that someone had seen their wheels, and they decided to ditch the car and the gun before they got tied to the evidence?” Land offered.

  “They steal four-grand and then ditch a car worth twice that?” McPhail countered.

  “If they’re suddenly worried more about the wrath of Tony Minelli than the law, they’d think about it. Maybe Little Dom will tell you all about that,” Land quipped.

  “Maybe I’ll be named Pope tomorrow,” McPhail said.

  “Good luck with that, your eminence.” Land patted McPhail on the shoulder. “Thanks for the call. I gotta run. I’ve got about twenty to find lunch before I have to brief a new AUSA. They’re bringing in some hotshot from Washington.”

  “How’s the food?” Turner asked.

  “This stuff is terrific,” Trask muttered between swallows. “Best barbeque I think I’ve ever had.”

  “The city specialty, and the specialty of this restaurant,” Turner said. “This is the old freight-house district.” He pointed across an open area. “Past the parking lot are the rail lines. That’s the back of the old Union Station building. It’s been rehabbed, and now it’s pretty nice inside. Beyond that is Crown Center, the home of Hallmark Cards. Across the street from Union Station is the nation’s only World War I memorial.”

  “Union Station,” Trask thought aloud. “Site of the Kansas City Massacre?”

  “That’s the one. What do you know about that?”

  “1933. Pretty Boy Floyd, Vern Miller and Adam Richetti try to spring Frank Nash, a bank robbery mastermind, from federal custody. They shoot Nash by mistake, and also kill an FBI agent
and three cops in the process. Melvin Purvis and his boys hunt Floyd down and kill him, Miller runs afoul of the mob and goes down, and Richetti dies in Missouri’s gas chamber.”

  Turner stared at Trask for a moment across his plate of ribs and brisket.

  “You’re a weird and scary guy, hero.”

  “Can’t deny the weird,” Trask shrugged. “I’ve always just had the memory. Everything I read. The scary can be useful in court. The hero label I can’t accept. I just do the job, same as you and hundreds of others, Cam.”

  “That’s not what I heard from D.C., or while we were in the blue uniforms, for that matter,” Turner replied. “I’m just glad you’re on our side. Anyway, I’m also glad you brought up the mob.”

  “Really? Why is that?”

  “That’s one of the things J.P. wants you to handle. At least he wants you to be the point man on it for a while.”

  “Don’t you have an Organized Crime Strike Force here?” Trask asked.

  “We used to,” Turner said. “In fact, that’s where they put me when I first got here. We were in a separate office in the old courthouse on the ground floor before they built the new one. My office wall backed up against the snack bar in the lobby. I smelled popcorn all day long. Drove me nuts.”

  Trask chuckled. “Your addiction?”

  “It sure as hell became one. Anyway, it was a very good unit for a while. Ever see the flick, Casino?”

  “Sure. Joe Pesci gets beat almost to death, then buried alive in a cornfield.”

  “That’s the one. It was pretty faithful to the real story. That case started and finished here. It was before I arrived, but our guys tapped the bagman’s phone in a local deli, and the trial was right here in the good old Western District of Missouri, the WDMO.”

  “But the unit’s no longer working? The Strike Force?”

  “We basically put ourselves out of business—for the time being, anyway. Most of the big boys in the local mob went off to jail with their compadres from Vegas, New York, and Chicago. What was left of the local family kept quiet for a while, and then they discovered a golden goose of sorts. Juice bars.”

  “That’s a new one. Explain please.” Trask shifted from his own brisket to a crock of baked beans. “I’ll listen while I chew. Damn, this stuff is good. No wonder your office’s folks gained weight after you moved back into the courthouse.”

  “The town certainly does not lack for great culinary fare. Okay, juice bars. You are aware, I’m sure, that the Supremes—in their collective and dementia-infected wisdom—have declared that exotic and erotic dancing is protected from certain kinds of state control because it is a form of First Amendment expression.”

  “California v. LaRue, 1972,” Trask said. “I’ve always wondered if old Bill Rehnquist had a membership to some ‘gentlemen’s club’ somewhere under an alias.”

  “Really? The case citation off the top of your head?” Turner stared at Trask again. He finally just shook his head and continued. “Anyway, the only leverage the state has for control is the club’s license to sell liquor. No booze, no rules. So, some genius in our friendly crime family here came up with the idea of keeping the state out of their business—that being strip joints—by eliminating the state’s control ticket. Now they have completely naked performers, but they sell OJ instead of Jack Daniel’s. They’ll charge a hefty cover fee at the door for some ‘name star’ like a Penthouse pet, and then ten bucks for a small glass of orange juice. If you can smuggle in your own airline mini-bottle to pour in your juice, they’ll look the other way. They make money hand-over-fist, and we can’t stop them.”

  “Naked women and fruit juice,” Trask pondered. “Quite the business model.”

  “Like I said, their golden goose. The big boys skim the cash off the top, pay enough taxes to make it look like they’re ponying up their fair share, and we can’t touch them. So far they’ve been smart enough not to kill the golden goose they created.”

  “The mob controls all the strip joints in town?”

  “We believe that the ones that aren’t directly controlled by the mob have to pay protection money to avoid fires and bombs. There was one on the east side that tried to buck the system for a while. The dancers kept getting beat up by some of the young Mafia punks, and they finally refused to go to work. The owner closed down and ran off.”

  “So, what’s left for us to work?” Trask asked.

  “I said the big boys are guarding their goose,” Cam continued. “They’re older and smarter than their stupid kids. There’s always the next generation of young hotshots to worry about, and we’re convinced that some of the favorite sons are running heroin, even though it’s against the declared, official mob company policy.”

  “That policy has always been a joke,” Trask snorted.

  “My thought as well,” Turner agreed, “but my prior boss at the Strike Force unfortunately bought into it. He thought the lifeblood of the mob was always a numbers racket or some other form of gambling. He’d open a grand jury into an illegal card game and then lock up the players or their relatives for a few months for contempt if they failed to testify. He didn’t really believe that they were into drugs.”

  “Nonsense.” Trask felt himself shaking his head. “They ran heroin in the early days, with Lucky Luciano and the Genovese family dealing it in the 20’s. Vito Genovese handed the tradition down to Carmine Galante, and Galante and the Bonanno family sold it in the 70’s with their Pizza Connection racket. Gotti and his crew were selling the stuff under their Don’s nose before Gotti took over the Gambino family. The mob ran booze when it became illegal during prohibition. They’ve always been into any illegal drug if it could make them money.”

  “And we believe—at least J.P., myself, and some others—that they are doing so again, with or without the blessing of the local don,” Turner said.

  “I’ve never seen the problem in indicting them for dope,” Trask said. “I know some of the old organized crime prosecutors think it’s beneath them, but a good drug conspiracy charge fits my main rule: never spend more time on a case than the defendant will spend in jail if he’s convicted. A guy takes a fall on a major drug case, and he falls hard. He doesn’t do three months in a halfway house for playing cards in the wrong place. It’s legal now in your casinos, anyhow.”

  Trask finished his last bite.

  “So which mobsters are into dope in KC?” he asked Cam.

  “You’ll learn more about that at our next stop. We can pay the tab now unless you want dessert.”

  “Nowhere to put it,” Trask said. “Not only was this great, it was huge. Let’s go.”

  Turner punched a number into the keypad outside the office complex door. Trask heard a click, and Cam opened the door to the Kansas City Police Department’s Career Criminal Unit. They turned left, and Trask saw a guy through one of the windows to an office. Turner led Trask in and introduced him to Sergeant Tom Land.

  “Have a seat at the first table there,” Land said, pointing to the center of the bullpen. “I’ll have a couple of guys join us. I need to grab a chart.”

  Cam and Trask took their seats at the table. Land re-emerged from his office, carrying a long, rolled cylinder of white paper.

  “Our organizational chart of the Kansas City Mafia,” he explained, rolling off a rubber band and spreading the chart on the table.

  Trask looked over the pyramid. The photograph at the top was one of a short, fat man in his late 50s with white hair, greased down and swept straight back. Trask did an involuntary double take at the sight of the man’s pitted face. Cam saw his reaction.

  “I don’t think getting a prom date was too easy for him back in the day,” Cam said. “He apparently had quite the fight with acne.”

  “I think he lost,” Trask responded.

  “That’s Anthony Peter Minelli, our local mob don,” a voice behind Trask boomed low and loud. “‘Tony Pete’ to his buds, ‘Fat Tony’ when he’s not in earshot.”

  Trask turned
and saw a tall, white-haired man in jeans and a polo shirt. There was a long mustache matching his hair on the guy’s upper lip. The stash was just starting to turn up at the corners into a handlebar. The face was broad and friendly, and Trask couldn’t help but think that the guy had probably played Santa Claus at a lot of Christmas parties.

  “Jeff Trask, John Foote, FBI,” Cam Turner said. “John was with our Bureau squad handling all the mob cases before—”

  “Before 9-11 turned the Bureau into a domestic CIA clone?” Trask asked.

  Foote laughed, just like Santa would have laughed, only there was no “Ho, ho, ho.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “I hate you and I like you all at once. Not very complimentary, but dead-on accurate. Our organized crime squad got disbanded soon afterward. Now I have to work for a police sergeant.”

  Foote nodded in the direction of Land, who read the puzzled look on Trask’s face.

  “We are a rarity,” Land explained. “By a memorandum of understanding, I have special agents from the FBI, ATF, DEA, and the United States Marshals Service assigned to my squad. Usually, police departments send detectives as task force officers to the federal agencies. We are the reciprocal unit. They work for me here in the CCU. I write their report cards.”

  A short, stocky guy with two days of stubble on his face was standing beside Foote. He reached around the taller man and offered his hand to Trask.

  “Billy Graham,” he said. “No relation whatsoever.”

  “Nice to meet you, reverend,” Trask replied, chuckling. “You don’t look a thing like your photos.”

  “I’m the other foot,” Graham said. “John’s partner.”

  “Billy’s one of our detectives,” Land explained. “We like mixing real cops in with our federal understudies.”

  “Bite me, Tommy,” Special Agent Foote said.

  Trask noticed a cast on Graham’s arm. “What’s that about?” he asked.

  “Broke my wrist in a soccer game last week,” Graham answered.