by Marc Rainer
“How do you break a wrist in a game that doesn’t allow you to use your hands?” Trask asked him.
“An excellent question,” Foote remarked, “and one he has not yet been able to answer. I like you even more, Jeff.”
“I fell, dammit!” Graham protested.
“Let’s get down to business, guys,” Land said, pointing at the chart spread on the table. “John, fill him in, please.”
“Certainly.” Foote took the chair to Trask’s left. “Some background first. The KC mob was originally an offshoot of the Chicago Mafia. Over the years, they’ve been involved in all the traditional mob hobbies: numbers, card games, loan-sharking, women, racketeering, intramural wars. There was a period here in the late 70s where they were shooting and blowing each other up all over the River Quay.”
Trask looked at Land for another explanation.
“Spelled ‘q-u-a-y’ but pronounced ‘key,’” Land said. “It’s that area down the hill and northwest from your courthouse, across the highway and the bridge on Grand.”
“I’ll learn,” Trask said. “I just saw the courthouse for the first time.”
“Anyhow,” Foote resumed, “we’ve knocked ’em around pretty hard over the past couple of decades. Now they’re generally reduced to—”
“Juice bars?” Trask asked. “Cam gave me the rundown on those.”
“Cameron does have the capacity to learn, if the lessons are presented slowly,” Foote said. He smiled at Turner, who was rolling his eyes and shaking his head.
“At any rate,” Foote said, “the juice bars are now the financial lifeblood of the organization here. They’re virtually impossible to crack. We all suspect—hell, we know—that they’re skimming money out of these clubs. They’re probably working two sets of books, two cash registers, but without an inside man or gal on the first real money count, we’ve got zip. They file tax returns every year to make it look as legitimate as possible.”
“Who are these guys?” Trask asked, pointing to the level on the pyramid just under Minelli.
“Those are the current capos,” Foote answered. “The one on the left is Paul Joseph Beretta: ‘Paulie Pistol,’ for the obvious, hardly original reason, or ‘Paulie Joe.’ He’s supposedly the current brains of the outfit. The one on the right is Dominic John Silvestri: ‘Dommy John,’ also known as ‘Big Dom.’ He’s thick, but not really that tall. He’s ‘Big Dom’ because his kid—Dom Junior—is ‘Little Dom.’ Big Dom is more the mob’s muscle guy right now, the enforcer in charge of discipline if somebody gets out of line.”
“Tony Pete, Paulie Joe, and Dommy John,” Trask thought out loud.
“Yep.” Foote nodded. “They’re all named after at least two saints, despite the fact that the last saintly thing any of ’em ever did was to get christened.”
“I see ‘Little Dom’ made the chart, too,” Trask said, pointing at another photo under and to the left of ‘Big Dom.’
“Our resident psycho.” Foote nodded again as he spoke. “Tommy thinks he may be good for at least two recent murders. Maybe you can help us with those.”
Land took the cue and walked over to his office, returning with a laptop. He played a surveillance video showing the younger Silvestri and the Gonzalez brothers following Big John Porcello out of the casino, and then returning to the casino floor loaded with cash.
“It fits our timeline for the shootings of Porcello and his wife,” Land explained.
Trask pointed to a photo on the chart, listing Big John Porcello as a Mafia lieutenant under the capo, Paul Beretta.
“He was a made guy?” Trask asked.
“He was,” Foote answered. “And, he was Fat Tony’s brother-in-law. Whoever shot Big John also killed Marge, Fat Tony’s sister. Under the mob code, that hit was either sanctioned by Fat Tony himself, or somebody just poked a very big and very mad bear.”
“The videos are pretty compelling,” Trask said. “Anyone talk to these Gonzalez brothers yet?”
“We can’t,” Land said. “They were both murdered shortly after the Porcellos were shot. I just got back from the river bank. Homicide had a tip about their car going into the Missouri. They winched it out and found a Glock forty in the car. Both the Porcellos were shot with a forty-caliber. The ballistic folks at our lab have it now, but we’re betting it’ll match the Porcello homicides.”
Trask shot a look at the gun in the holster on Land’s belt.
“Yeah, the same gun we carry,” Land said. “A Glock forty.”
“Where’s Little Dom now?” Trask asked.
“Probably at work, or more accurately, at his bar,” Foote replied. “That little shit hasn’t really worked a day in his pampered life, but his dad bought a bar for him so that he could claim that he had a job. His staff does all the real work. It’s on the north side of one of the older Italian neighborhoods. The dive is called ‘McElhaney’s.’”
“A good Italian name,” Trask observed.
“Our homicide guys are going to pitch him,” Land said, “but we’re not optimistic. He’ll probably lawyer up at the first sign of a badge, and we don’t have enough yet to lock him up.”
“So, any ideas?” Foote asked.
“Yeah, but not a real good one,” Trask answered. “The most probable motive for now is robbery, that is, the theft of Porcello’s gambling winnings. That’s a state matter, not a federal crime. Since you don’t have any reason for Minelli wanting his sister and her husband killed, that also takes it out of any racketeering motive, and we just don’t have any federal jurisdiction that I can see. Not yet, at least. If you come up with something else, I’ll be happy to consider it.”
“How about heroin dealing?” Foote said. “We’ve heard that Little Dom may have some people selling the junk, maybe even out of the bar.”
“I can work that,” Trask said. “Let me get settled in, then come see me.”
Trask saw that Cam Turner was standing.
“We have another appointment?” Trask asked him.
“Yep,” Cam said. “A realtor. We need to find you a house.”
“What do you think?” Land asked Foote after Turner and Trask pulled out of the parking lot.
“I like the guy,” Foote said. “No BS, and you could see the wheels turning with everything we gave him. He was looking for answers, not a way to dodge a hard case.”
“I did some digging with the guys in D.C.,” Land said. “I spoke to a detective named Carter who worked with him a lot. Carter said we couldn’t have done any better. He also threatened to come out here and kill us all for taking Trask out of his town. I think we’ll like him a lot.”
Dominic Silvestri, Jr., arrived at McElhaney’s a little after noon, his usual time for making an appearance. He checked in with Sharon the bartender and Suzie the waitress to see if they needed anything ordered from the distributor. Satisfied that the bar was adequately stocked for a few days, he headed to his office in the back. He took the key ring from his pocket and unlocked the door, closed and locked it again behind him, and walked straight to the desk.
I need to ditch that gun before somebody comes looking for it. It’ll be at the bottom of the river in fifteen minutes.
He went straight to the bottom drawer on the right side of the desk and pulled it open.
What the hell? I know I put it here last night.
He shoved the drawer closed and almost ran back through the bar to his car in the parking lot.
He found two large men waiting on him.
“Got a minute, Dom?” Micky McPhail asked, displaying his gold shield.
“Not for you,” Dom said, doing his best to collect himself. “You know the number. Call my attorney.”
Trask looked up at the single column dominating the structure known as the Liberty Memorial, the nation’s only national monument to those who had served, fought, and died in the First World War. He stood on the southern side of a street appropriately named after General Blackjack Pershing, who had led the American “doughboys” during “The Great Wa
r,” as it came to be known.
Two hours of house hunting had been enough for the day, and Trask felt the need to find something specific to replace a touchstone that he would be leaving behind in D.C. While in Washington, if he felt the need to retreat to something meaningful, Trask could always visit Arlington, but his usual place of solitude had been the National Law Enforcement Memorial. There were multiple reasons why the memorial had been his choice.
First, it was incredibly convenient, being located across the street from the “Triple Nickel,” the building at 555 4th Street which housed the offices of the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. More importantly, however, the names of the fallen heroes killed in the line of duty and etched into the walls held special meanings for Trask. Those names included his first mentor in the U.S. Attorney’s office, Robert Lassiter; Juan Ramirez, a detective who had helped investigate Trask’s first major case, another officer who had been blown up during Trask’s investigation of the Los Zetas drug cartel; and even a high school classmate from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, who had been shot to death delivering a summons.
Trask had always been a student of history, and he fully subscribed to the warning that those who refused to learn from history were doomed to repeat it. The maxim ran through his head again as he looked up at the Liberty Memorial.
Ironic. The most quoted saying about history has a murky history. Who said it first? Edmund Burke? George Santayana? Churchill? It doesn’t matter. It’s true.
Before entering the shrine, he turned and stared across the street toward Union Station. One grandfather on his dad’s side had ridden a train through the station on the way to California in the early days of 1941, even before Pearl Harbor. The young marine would eventually find himself in the mud of Guadalcanal and then the kamikaze “turkey shoot” at Okinawa.
Trask turned back to the Liberty and went inside. The legacy of another ancestor spoke to him as he walked through the doors. A maternal great-grandfather had been a corporal in an American artillery section during World War I. He had only met the old gentlemen once, and Trask had noticed that he had been totally deaf. They hadn’t been big on ear protection in 1917.
Trask knew the story that he would find inside the memorial: nine million souls lost in the “War to End All Wars,” which in the end had ended nothing. The generals fought the first mechanized war with tactics learned from the era of Napolean, sending their millions of troops to die as they rushed across barren fields into the crossfire of machine guns. The French even resorting to the old Roman penalty of “decimation,” shooting a tenth of their own troops for “cowardice” when entire companies refused to comply with insane orders that would have certainly killed them all.
The treaty ending the war had been based on the now-discredited British theory of “spheres of influence,” joining Sunni and Shiite Muslims into a “nation” called Iraq, and lumping Christians and Muslims into the theoretical country of Yugoslavia. Punishments were so severe for the losing side that they paved the way for the rise of Hitler. The Treaty of Versailles that ended the First World War had actually done nothing but guarantee the beginning of the second.
Trask walked through the exhibits shaking his head at the insanity, wondering how human beings had existed for weeks in the stagnant trenches.
Rats everywhere. If you had a good trench, it had boards and sticks or maybe some sandbags to reinforce the walls. If you ended up in a forward trench, you just prayed that a bullet or artillery shell took you out quickly, and that you didn’t drown in either the mud or a cloud of mustard gas.
It was early evening by the time he made his way back to the sidewalk on Pershing. He called Cam, who pulled up a few minutes later.
“Get your history fix, hero?” Turner asked him as they headed back toward Trask’s hotel.
“Yeah, and I’m very happy to be much farther away from the center of our political center,” Trask said.
“Farther away from boss problems like King Arthur?”
“That’s part of it; I’m also away farther from collections of political geniuses who manage to massacre generations of their own people, like the French and Brits in World War I. I’m glad to know this place is here. History gives me an anchor and some perspective. I lucked out, Cam. I never had to be part of a shooting war, but—seeing what those who did had to go through—any time I think my job is getting tough, I’ll have a place to come for a reality check.
“They had their war; we have the war on crime.”
Trask cringed. Cam saw it.
“What was that for?”
“There has never been a war on crime,” Trask said. “It’s not a phrase that works. Wars have beginnings and ends, or at least they should. Crime has always been there, and always will be. It’s an unfortunate part of the human condition. We’d do a lot better as a nation if we’d stop referring to police work as ‘wars,’ and referring to our wars as ‘police actions.’ We confuse the two, and we end up with wars without conclusions and expectations that we’ll actually win that ‘war on crime,’ or ‘war on drugs.’ Sorry, but it’s been a pet peeve. Didn’t mean to climb on a soapbox.”
Cam shrugged. “No offense taken for valid points. I hadn’t thought of them. Our job can still feel like a battle at times, but at least nobody’s shooting at us.”
Trask nodded. “No, they’re not; not most of the time.”
Dallas, Texas
Tyler Pemberton Cannon, IV, turned his pickup through the gate and up the long driveway toward his house.
At least that still works, he thought as the automatic gate closed behind him. He saw that the acreage that made up the front yard to the big house needed mowing again, and he shook his head. I’ll try and get the tractor running when I get back tomorrow. Maybe the day after. Got to feed the stock before I leave.
He passed the entrance to the side road that led to the barn. A brief memory of happier times—when his father had stabled horses there and the family had cows to tend—made him smile for a few fleeting seconds. The smile left his face as he stole a glance down the road toward the structure. It needed painting, and one side of the barn’s twin front doors was hanging at an ugly angle from a single hinge.
A few more deals like this one and I’ll have the money to put the place back together. I’ll pick up some more Powerball tickets, too. Might get lucky.
He pulled the pickup to the front door and dropped the tailgate, reaching into the truck bed for two large cardboard boxes with ventilation holes in the tops. He put one box down while he reached into his pocket for the key to the door and turned the lock. He cracked the door open, grabbed the handle for the box, and pushed the door open with his foot. The blast of cold air from the house earned his nod of approval.
That’ll keep them from getting too nasty.
Cannon walked a few steps between the large, ventilated Tupperware containers that were stacked—floor to ceiling—on either side of the hallway. He checked the thermostat on the wall at the end. It registered a very cool 62 degrees.
Good. Just right. Great for the stock, horrible for my power bill.
He looked around what had been the living room when his parents were alive. More containers lined those walls now. He retraced his steps to the front door, carrying one of the boxes, and began dropping one of the mice into each of the bins. Once the boxes were empty, he headed for the door, made sure the lights were off, and climbed back into the pickup. An hour later he was on the interstate, heading north.
West Virginia
Trask smiled as he saw Lynn waking up in the passenger seat.
Her eyes blinked a few times, adjusting to the light.
“What’s playing?” she asked.
Trask chuckled. His wife knew him too well. He had always had an internal jukebox playing in his head. Sometimes the tunes reflected a current situation. Sometimes they seemed to be prophesies. He had learned not to ignore them. Most of the time, at least.
“‘Kansas City,’ of course. W
ilbert Harrison,” he said.
“Of course. How long have I been asleep?” Lynn asked.
“A couple of hours. You went down right after we broke through the end of the logjam on I-66.”
“Wow.” She turned and peered into the back seat of the Nissan Rogue. “How are the babies?”
“Sacked out just like their mama,” Trask told her. He turned the rearview mirror down for a moment and took a peek. The three dogs were each curled into balls in their respective bolster beds, laying side by side.
Nikki, the oldest and the alpha at thirteen, was on the right side of the car, behind Lynn. She was a tan Shiba Inu mix with a tail that curled up and over her back when she stood. She was a smart, calm, middle-sized girl, and she kept the others in line.
Boo, eleven years old and the largest of the three dogs by far, was part husky and part standard schnauzer, with piercing blue eyes when they were open. Her bed was in the center of the seat for several reasons. First, it fit better there among the various cushions, towels, and other things that Trask had cram-packed into the vehicle. Second, it was more stable there than on the sides of the bench seat. Most importantly, it put Boo between the other two dogs, where she could feel and smell them and feel more at home. She was diabetic, and the cataracts from the disease had finally taken her sight, making her completely blind. She was also unique, so Trask and Lynn generally referred to her as “The Boo,” or “the one and only Boo.”
The third dog, Tasha, was—like her sisters—a rescue. A full-blooded mini-schnauzer, the little “perma-puppy” was sleeping on the edge of the seat behind Trask. She had been force-bred in a puppy mill before they had taken her in at age six. She was now eleven, the same age as the one and only Boo.
Trask checked the car’s speed, and Lynn saw him do it.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Yeah. Just want to make sure I keep it at eighty or under. I lashed down that roof cargo rig as tight as I could, but I don’t want to put too much wind drag on it. As long as it holds, and as long as the tires don’t blow out, I think we’re good.” Trask had to laugh a little. “I never thought we’d get anywhere near this much stuff in this little car.”
