Deception in Savannah: A Humorous Novel of Murder, Mystery, Sex, and Drugs

by Charles Dougherty

  Connie had put aside the nagging familiarity of the voice as she tried to make sense out of what this man was saying. She didn’t know who Tony Cicero was. Other than that, she could sort of follow his drift. The guy’s repeated references to this Tony made it seem that he thought she knew who Tony Cicero was and found him objectionable. She was also puzzled by the reference to "the other guy" -- who could that be? This man sounded certain that Connie knew both of these people. Sergeant Denardo had told her she was likely to hear from the people who had been behind Leatherby and that she should play along as best she could and call him as soon as possible after they got in touch with her.

  "Well," she said, "I think we would all like to keep doing business. It’s just that after all that’s happened, I don’t feel very comfortable with you people. My faith in your goodwill has been shaken. I need to think this over and you probably do, too. We have to figure out a mutually attractive way to go forward. I don’t even know how to reach you, with Rick and Tony gone."

  "Okay, you can reach us by leaving a message at 912-455-4092. Just say we need to talk and we’ll call you back at the hospital. By the way, the investors want you to know they had nothing to do with putting the cops on your trail – that was the late doctor’s doing. They hope the police will just accept that he was overcome by guilt over the accident."

  Connie hung up when she heard dial tone. She thought the call was puzzling. As she tried to grasp what was intended behind the veiled references, she forgot the familiarity of the voice. She was shaken that they knew she had met with the police. She wondered how much they knew about that. They couldn’t know she had made a deal with the cops or they would have said something. She was looking for a concealed threat in the phone call, but she could find none. The name Tony Cicero meant nothing to her, either.

  She knew she should call Sergeant Denardo. There was no need for her to try to work all this out by herself; she was already square with the police. After looking at her watch, Connie realized she would have to wait until morning to reach Sergeant Denardo. He had told her that he was flying back tonight and would be in his office in the morning. He’d also given her his home phone and cell phone numbers, but she figured he was on a plane now.

  Jimmy and Sam were also rehashing the conversation. Something about it didn’t feel right. Sam wondered why she was so reticent; they had as good as told her she had won. She should have been more excited -- this was one cool lady. She had put Tony away without a second thought. They were sure of that, the way she had pretended to know nothing about him, like a 325-pound gorilla just didn’t even exist. They speculated that Connie was connected with some major criminal organization, but they couldn’t guess which one.

  Sam had learned about Rick’s scheme from a business associate on the West Coast who had been involved in the original string of diet clinics with the car dealer as a front man. He had called the guy earlier, to see if the name "Connie Barrera" meant anything. The man had professed never to have heard of such a person, but Sam wasn’t sure that meant anything. You couldn’t trust crooks who dealt in drugs. He of all people knew that. He was wondering if that guy was trying to expand his operation to the East Coast. Sam couldn’t imagine any self respecting mobster using a woman as a soldier, but, after all, the guy was in California. Things were different out there, Sam knew. He wasn’t narrow-minded. He prided himself on his liberal attitudes, so he was willing to accept that maybe Connie had been sent east to scout out the Alfano’s business. She was doing all right for herself so far; that was for sure. Anybody with the stroke to blow away Fat Tony got Sam’s instant respect.

  Jimmy was less ready than Sam to believe that Connie had been sent to infiltrate their operation; he thought Connie was nothing more than she appeared to be. He was inclined to think Dave Bannon had something to do with their troubles -- after all, the Bannon guy had killed Ski Cat barehanded, and Ski Cat was the meanest dude Jimmy had ever run across. There didn’t appear to be a connection between Bannon and Connie, at least on the surface, although Bannon was seeing Kathy Denardo and Connie did have her card.

  Sam couldn’t make Bannon fit the image of a bad guy, no matter how hard he tried. He had known Bannon as long as he had known Joe Denardo. Bannon was a local boy who left Savannah and made good. Now he was coming home. His family was clean, just like the Denardos, and Sam remembered Bannon from their high school days as a straight arrow. Besides, he was dating Joe Denardo’s sister. As much as Sam hated Joe, he couldn’t imagine that Joe would let anybody remotely crooked near his sister. Sam remembered asking her to a formal dance at Benedictine once, and Joe had gotten right in his face. Sam had been two years older and 20 pounds heavier, not to mention outranking Joe in the school's military hierarchy, and he already shared his father’s hatred of the Denardos. For all of that, the cool look in Joe’s eyes as they sized each other up made Sam back off. No, he couldn’t figure that Bannon had gone bad while he was away, and if he had, Joe would have chased him away by now.

  Sam thought Jimmy was over-complicating things, trying to avoid facing up to the fact that they had been bested by a woman. He had to believe that one of the torments Tony would suffer in hell for all eternity would be knowing that he had been snuffed on a woman’s orders. Even though Tony was his cousin, Sam had to chuckle at the notion. He’d never seen anybody more bigoted than Tony, although Jimmy was a close second.

  Sam wondered what had transpired between Connie and Joe Denardo. He couldn’t think of a way to find out, but he was worried. Jimmy was sure Joe had gone to see her because that idiot Leatherby had tried to blame her for the hit and run. Sam suspected that was part of it, but he had a bad feeling about that encounter. If Connie was connected, one clean way for the opposition to take the Alfanos off the board would be to turn them over to the cops. Sam was sure Denardo would like that. Once the field was clear of Alfano family members, the West Coast bunch could send Connie off somewhere else and send in their own players to take over the Alfano’s action.

  Sam was shifting his focus from the blackmail threat. He was worrying about how to survive what he was beginning to believe was a take-over attempt by some unknown mob rivals. With Ski Cat and Fat Tony out of action, he didn’t want to counterattack the bunch in California, even if he could be sure they were the ones. There would be time for retribution later. Ditto for Barrera. Her blackmail threat aside, going after her would attract way too much attention right now. That meant she could point the finger at Jimmy, but if Sam was right, she had already done that. Sam wondered whether she could connect him personally to any of this. He didn’t think so. He was reasonably sure that the most anybody could do would be to speculate on his probable participation. With Ski Cat, Tony, and Leatherby all silenced, only Jimmy could make a definite case against Sam. He trusted Jimmy, even though he wasn’t a blood relative. He was Sam’s wife’s little brother, and he had worked for Sam faithfully all his adult life, since he got out of high school.

  Jimmy was going to take a fall. There was no way around it. The more Sam thought about it, the more certain he became that Connie was working for the West Coast people. She would have already given Jimmy to Denardo, then. Sam thought Jimmy would understand. Sam would get him the best criminal lawyer around, and Jimmy would just have to keep his mouth shut. He would probably have to do some time, but not too much. Money-laundering shouldn’t cost him too many years, and he should be safe from any other charges. Sam knew he needed to talk this over with Jimmy. Clearly, now was not the time because Jimmy was still confident that they would win.

  Day 15, Morning

  “Well, at least you didn’t come back sunburned, Joe," Charlie Thompson teased.

  Joe settled into the chair next to Charlie’s desk. He sipped his coffee in silence, waiting for Charlie to get settled with his own cup, to which he was busily adding a huge amount of sugar. Once Charlie had stirred his coffee to a syrup-like consistency, Joe started to fill him in on what he had learned from Connie, and Charlie told hi
m the latest on the Leatherby death.

  Based on the medical examiner’s findings, Leatherby had indeed been murdered. The county police had begun the boring routine of questioning neighbors, hoping someone had seen something that would give them a lead. At the moment, all they had was the fingerprints on the note, still unidentified pending an answer from the feds.

  Joe and Charlie went over what Connie had revealed, trying to fit Leatherby’s death into the context of her story. They felt certain his death was related somehow to the money-laundering activity Connie had uncovered. She had explained her extortion scheme and had further speculated that Leatherby could only raise the payoff money by telling his silent partners about Connie’s threat. Connie was protected by their fear of exposure, but Leatherby had been without any protection. Still, by killing him, they jeopardized the continued operation of the clinic. Joe and Charlie didn’t think they would do that unless there was some other problem between them and Leatherby.

  They couldn’t figure out who was behind the money laundering. Ski Cat Wilson, small time thug and drug dealer, had kidnapped Belk and searched Connie’s and Kathy’s condos. Connie had no idea why he would be interested in either of them. They could only conclude that he was searching at the behest of Rick Leatherby’s silent partners, but that still didn’t explain the inclusion of Kathy.

  Jimmy Taglio was obviously in the middle of the money-laundering scheme. Joe remembered him as not too bright back in grade school and didn’t think he was otherwise remarkable. To Joe’s way of thinking, Jimmy clearly had to be working for somebody else. He wasn’t sharp enough to be into something like this on his own account. Joe had lost track of Jimmy in high school, as Jimmy had gone to the public schools after eighth grade. Charlie tapped Jimmy’s name into his computer using his best two-finger technique, but Jimmy hadn’t been arrested for anything – at least, not around Savannah.

  They decided Joe should call Bill Washington with the county police and fill him in on Connie’s story. Joe finished his coffee and went to his office. He checked his voice mail and found a message from Connie, along with a number of routine calls. He called her before he made his call to Bill.

  Connie answered on Joe's first attempt, and she told him about the puzzling phone call she had received last night.

  "I thought the voice was familiar, but I couldn't place it last night. When I woke up, I realized it was Jimmie Taglio," she reported. Neither of them were too surprised, since it was clear from Connie’s cursory check that Jimmy had been involved in creating bogus expenses to take cash out of the diet clinic.

  "Should I call him back? What do I say?" Connie asked.

  "Let's give it a little more time," Joe suggested. "There's a lot going on here to keep 'em busy. We can use the time to figure out exactly what your next move should be, if we even want you to call them. I'll call you back this afternoon, either way. Thanks for your help."

  "No problem. I'm just happy to be on the right side, finally. Talk with you this afternoon," Connie said as she hung up the phone, feeling at ease for the first time since this whole thing started.

  Joe called Bill Washington, and they compared notes. Joe learned that the county police had gotten a match on the fingerprints on Leatherby’s bogus suicide note. They belonged to Jimmy Taglio, who had been fingerprinted when he joined the Army out of high school. Bill thought that made Jimmy look pretty guilty, but he wanted to see what other information they could develop before they moved on him. They still wanted to find his boss. Bill had arranged to have Jimmy followed, but so far he hadn’t gone anywhere interesting.

  Dave Bannon was settled comfortably at the desk in Kathy’s home office, clicking away at the keyboard of his laptop computer. Kathy was busy showing houses to prospective new residents and had suggested that Dave should set up shop in her little-used upstairs office. He had been retained as a financial consultant by Charlie Thompson for a token fee to research the ownership of Chromatic Nutrition, Inc. Dave had been briefed by Charlie and a couple of Joe’s co-workers on the subject of drug smuggling in coastal Georgia.

  It was no secret that a lot of illicit cargo found its way ashore along the banks and marshes of the myriad of sounds, rivers, and creeks that made up the eastern edge of the Georgia coastal plain. The area had been a smugglers' paradise since the early colonial days. The scope and complexity of the waterways through the marshlands made it virtually impossible to police, and modern satellite imagery had made it only marginally more difficult for the bad guys to land their contraband.

  Dave remembered finding all sorts of interesting things adrift during his teenaged explorations of the local waters. In those days, moonshine stills had been operating on some of the less accessible areas of high ground out in the marshes. He had come upon one that was cooking steadily while he was out fishing one cold January morning. He had employed the accepted strategy of pretending to see nothing, scanning his surroundings obviously and busily, as if looking for something in the middle distance.

  This was supposed to let the hidden guards know that you were blind to their activity, and if they bought your act, you never saw them. You just got back in your boat after a few minutes and went on your way.

  In that same period, bales of marijuana had begun to appear occasionally, floating in local waters. Known as "square grouper," these had either been lost in nocturnal cargo transfers in the near-shore ocean waters or ditched by smuggler’s boats when the cops got uncomfortably close.

  Charlie and his team had explained that the scale of illegal smuggling had grown substantially since Dave's youth. The bad guys were much more businesslike and their activities were better organized. They joked that square grouper had been fished almost to extinction, and the contraband of choice was cocaine these days. There was an ample supply of the drug on the streets of Savannah, and intercepted shipments on the interstate highways in the area pointed to the city as a major port of entry for hard drugs of all sorts.

  Dave’s research revealed that someone had gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal the ownership of Chromatic Nutrition, Inc. The company had its nominal corporate roots in Delaware, and the listed officers all showed up on dozens of other corporate scorecards. This wasn’t a surprise to Dave, and undeterred, he kept digging in a number of expensive and extensive databases. He finally ended up with a short list of offshore companies as the ultimate owners of Chromatic Nutrition.

  He knew the pattern well, and he knew that the offshore companies existed only as brass plates among many other brass plates on dingy second-floor office doors in musty tropical outposts. The only way to get behind the brass plates was to be the highest bidder for the temporary loyalty of the owner of the door. Even if you spent the money, you probably only got as far as another brass plate in another obscure country.

  It was obvious that this was no small time, local money-laundering operation. Somebody with skill, experience, and resources had set up an ownership maze to frustrate inquiries like Dave’s. He picked up the phone and called Charlie to report his meager results.

  Charlie was disappointed but not surprised by Dave’s findings. He, too, had seen this pattern before. He still thought there was probably somebody local behind the diet clinic, even if Dave thought the paper trail was too sophisticated for that to be likely. This meant that their only hope of getting to the ultimate owners was to work through the organization one layer at a time, getting each hoodlum to tell what he knew. An organization that had made this much effort at secrecy would ensure that each person knew no more than necessary for his own function, making it difficult for one thug under duress to do serious damage.

  Sam Alfano was in the midst of a phone call that he had not wanted to make. The voice on the other end was, as usual, flat and unemotional, without any discernible accent. It was so bland that Sam had never been able to form a mental image of the person. It had been the same voice for all the years Sam had been dealing with "them," as he thought of his unseen business associates.


  He didn’t know how they had found him, let alone who they were. The voice had called him one day on his unlisted number to tell him that a million dollars was being deposited to one of his numbered offshore accounts. He had no idea how they found the account, even. They told him to think of it as a test. The million dollars was to be his, and in exchange, he was to pay a certain financial consulting firm $200,000 "for services rendered," if he wished to keep doing business with them. If he didn’t want to do business with them, he should consider the million dollars a token of their esteem for his abilities.

  Sam hadn’t believed that for a New York minute. He knew someone had just bought a share of his operation. He was certain his choice was to do business on their terms or die, although they never breathed a threatening word. Sam didn’t mind having new partners. Their investment fueled the rapid growth of his business. The relationship had burgeoned over the years and Sam had grown comfortable dealing with his unknown partners. He had never yet disappointed them and they had made him wealthy. Until now, he had never had cause to initiate a call to them.

  Sam had dialed an 800 number they had furnished for emergency use, and after what seemed an interminable series of telephone noises, "the voice" had greeted him by name. Sam had been a little surprised by that and had said as much. The voice had patiently explained that the number had been set up for Sam’s exclusive use, and that it routed the call through a series of software-defined relays. It would only work once and was untraceable. Sam thought that was amazing, but he had too much on his mind to discuss it further. He explained that there were some problems with his operation that would require him to cease doing business for a while.