Sharky's Machine

by William Diehl

  “And Howard Burns arrived in Lincoln in 1968. How convenient.”

  “I wonder if the Feds really think they got their money’s worth out of him?”

  “Anything else in there? How about that … heroic war record of his?”

  Livingston rummaged through more articles. He stopped at one and said, “Hey, listen to this. According to this story Scardi did his first hit for Lucky Luciano and he screwed it up and Luciano chewed his ass and told him he didn’t get close enough to the mark. The next day Scardi gives Luciano a box with the guy’s ears in it and says, ‘Here, was that close enough?’”

  Sharky’s grip on the wheel tightened.

  “All it says about his war record,” said Livingston, “is that he was about to be deported in 1944 as an undesirable alien, but the case was dropped after he, quote, ‘performed valuable and courageous services for the invasion forces of Italy.’ Unquote. Nothing about guerrilla operations.”

  “Extortion … kidnapping … murder … and they made a deal with him,” Sharky said. “That’s the courageous war hero Martland thought was such a sweetheart.”

  “Makes you wonder what the hell kind of deal they made with him in ’68,” said Livingston. “He musta come down on half the Mafia.”

  Sharky thought to himself, This time there won’t be any deals, because this time the government isn’t going to get near him, this time we’re going to put that son of a bitch out of business permanently—one way or the other.

  And he said aloud, “This time he’s ours.”

  “We gotta get him first,” Livingston said.

  19

  There were only two things in Sergeant Herb Anderson’s entire life that he was proud of: a commendation he had won when, while off-duty, he had overpowered an armed robber sticking up a Seven-Eleven Market; the other was his son Tommy, an all-city football player who had already been offered three college scholarships and the season was only over a week.

  The rest of his life had been a downhill slide. His other son, Harry, had been a problem since he was a child. The boy had been in and out of private schools all his life and as a result Anderson’s wife, Lucy, had gradually turned into a hypertense, morose hypochondriac, a woman who complained constantly of back trouble, headaches, female problems, and lumps in her breast which the doctor somehow could never find.

  Anderson himself had changed through the years from a jovial man, well liked by the other members of the force, to a depressed and involuted misfit, a man harassed by financial problems and a son he both loved and despised, who worked long hours to escape the enervating atmosphere at home. It was his reputation as a tireless workhorse that had earned him a sergeant’s stripes.

  He was grateful when Priest called him on Saturday morning, his day off, because it gave him an honest excuse to escape the house and enjoy a lunch at the Regency.

  The man Anderson knew as Priest was actually Gerald Kershman. It was Kershman who picked the busy bars in the better hotels, which were more popular with transients than with the local trade. He usually arrived fifteen minutes ahead of Anderson, seeking out the most secluded and the darkest corner in the room. Not that anyone would recognize Kershman or particularly remember him; it was his own paranoia at work. It was one of DeLaroza’s peculiar quirks, and he had many, that the corporation should always have a strong police contact in every city in which it did business. Kershman, for his own reasons, had been more than willing to oblige. He was called on to provide information from time to time, nothing particularly onerous, and yet Kershman, a man with many complexes, always became nervous when he met with Anderson. He didn’t like his hangdog attitude, the inevitable spots on his ties, and mostly the fact that, while Anderson was a fair police officer, he was not too sharp. It was a struggle for Kershman to conceal his contempt and his sense of superiority when he was around Anderson.

  Kershman nursed a marguerita until Anderson arrived, a few minutes late and apologizing as usual. He ordered his usual Michelob draft and sat with a forced grin on his face. Kershman avoided asking about Anderson’s family, a question that usually resulted in a fifteen-minute monologue that ended like a chapter from a soap opera. Kershman had established himself as a correspondent for a European news syndicate, a perfect cover story for the kind of information he usually sought.

  “I’m in a bit of a jam,” Kershman said, getting right to it.

  “What’s the problem?” Anderson asked and his concern annoyed Kershman.

  “I heard there was a homicide in one of the fancy apartment houses out on Peachtree last night,” Kershman said. “Thing is, there’s been nothing reported so far on it. Nothing on TV, the radio, in the newspapers. My problem is I queried our news office about it before really checking it out and they’re hot for the story. Now it looks like my tip may have been unreliable.”

  “Did you check the police reports?”

  “Yes. Nothing.”

  Anderson frowned. Then shook his head as though disagreeing with his own thoughts. “There was this John Doe turned up in the city dump yesterday. Now, that would make a good story for you. No hands. His hands were cut off. And he was shot in the face with a shotgun.”

  Kershman listened intently to Anderson, making mental notes of everything he said. He always was prepared to tell DeLaroza more than he wanted to know rather than less.

  “This was definitely a woman,” Kershman said.

  “I was around until four o’clock this morning. Lot of crazy things going on, but I would have heard if there was a killing in that neighborhood.”

  “Well, if you check around, discreetly. Perhaps, uh, there’s some reason the police are keeping it under wraps. I would prefer not to create any curiosity. I just thought I might get something from the inside on it.”

  “I’ll go on down after we leave here, snoop around quietly. See if Twigs knows anything. He’s the county coroner.”

  “Remember, I don’t want to make any waves. This must be done carefully just in case they are working on something they don’t want the press to know about.” He paused to sip the marguerita and then asked, “What crazy stuff was going on?”

  Anderson chuckled. “Oh, Larry Abrams was screwing around with something half the night. A tape of some kind for the Vice Squad. He’s working with a new man over there named Sharky.”

  “What was on the tape?”

  “I don’t know. Neither does he. Know what he said? He said it sounded like a Chinese orgy.”

  Kershman took another sip and kept listening.

  “What made me think of it is that I picked up a post mortem tape for Abrams about two A.M. from Grady Hospital. It wasn’t the John Doe, because Twigs was complaining that Riley in Homicide was pushing him to do it before he went home.”

  “I see. Well, if you could just kind of check around. The thing is, I’m pushed for time. If there is something I can chase down, I’d like to know by this evening.”

  “I’ll do my damn best,” Anderson said sincerely.

  “Was there anything else?”

  “Nope. Actually it wasn’t a very lively night. Oh, yeah, Abrams pulled a fingerprint report for somebody, too. I took it down to him. Funny thing, he got a positive make on the prints, but the subject’s been dead for a couple of months. Some truck driver from Nebraska.”

  “And who is this Abrams?”

  “A wiretap man, been in the OC six months or so. Nice little guy. Very talented. The Feds even borrow him every once in a while.”

  “Maybe he was doing this job for the government people,” Kershman suggested.

  “No, I saw the tape. It had Sharky’s name on it.”

  “And what about this Sharky?”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t do something on him. He’s the narcotics cop who shot the pusher on the bus the other night.”

  “Oh, yes, of course.” Kershman remembered seeing the headline, but he had not paid much attention to the story.

  “He was transferred into the Vice Squad because of i
t,” Anderson said. “Now keep that under your derby, okay? It hasn’t been released publicly.”

  “I won’t say a word,” Kershman said.

  20

  Sharky had filed a radio message through central for Friscoe to meet him and Livingston at a pizza parlor on Peachtree Street called Franco’s. They had been there less than ten minutes when Friscoe arrived, puffing through the door and looking no better or worse than he had at breakfast. Friscoe plopped down in the booth with them and waved the waiter away.

  “I got so much coffee in me, I couldn’t eat if I wanted to,” he said. “So, you got some news?”

  Livingston was eating a submarine sandwich. Without looking up he said, “We just wanted to say hello. We thought maybe you missed us.”

  “Anything new?” Sharky said, concentrating on a piece of pizza that had everything on it but chocolate syrup.

  The lieutenant smiled proudly. “Yeah, I made a little score. I got lucky like Papa. Kenny Bautry, a Fed probation officer, has a guy who fits the description of the stiff in the city dump pretty good. Did thirty years plus in the joint at Leavenworth. Got out in October, reported once, and Kenny hasn’t seen him since.”

  Sharky took another bite of pizza. “Name isn’t Corrigon, is it?” he said.

  “Well shit!” Friscoe said. “I’m gonna get a goddamn complex.”

  Livingston slid the picture of Scardi across the table in front of Friscoe. “That’s who hit Corrigon and Domino.”

  Friscoe looked at the picture and reared back in surprise.

  “That’s Angelo Scardi!”

  “That’s very good, Barney,” Livingston said.

  Friscoe looked back at the picture with disblief. “Angelo Scardi?” he repeated.

  Sharky nodded. “There’s no question about it, Barney. We got a positive on the prints.” Then he leaned across the table and quietly told Friscoe about Scardi, Operation Stitch, and Corrigon. Friscoe listened without comment and then leaned back in the booth, letting it all sink in.

  “So, what’s your theory?” he asked.

  “Arch and I think Scardi rigged the whole operation from the front end and somebody finished the job for him and fingered Corrigon.”

  “Such as …”

  Sharky said, “Maybe this La Volte. Look, Scardi lived in that same area from 1930 until 1935. And Scardi was the only person who ever actually met La Volte face to face. Martland says Scardi only knew him by his code name, but I think that’s bullshit. I think Scardi knew this guy from the old days. I think it was set up from the beginning that La Volte would hit the team when it went in. Scardi put it all together, then conveniently got sick and came back to the U.S. That took him out of the action and put him three thousand miles away when it happened—with a perfect alibi. Then he and La Volte split four mil in gold.”

  “That’s pretty good,” Friscoe said. “But what we can’t do, we can’t get too cocky yet. We got to collar Scardi. But we also got to fill in some blanks here.”

  “Like what?” Livingston asked.

  “Like why did Scardi come here? And why did he off Domino? And what was Corrigon doin’ here? This guy gets outa Leavenworth after thirty years, gets on the first bus south, and comes straight to Atlanta. But he wasn’t looking for Scardi, because Scardi was still in Nebraska at the time.”

  “That’s right,” Sharky said. “Which means Corrigon was after somebody else and that somebody else pulled Scardi in to do the number on Corrigon.”

  “And you think it was La Volte he was after, right?” Friscoe said.

  “What the hell would this Italian guerrilla be doin’ in Atlanta?” Livingston asked.

  Friscoe shrugged. “It’s thirty years ago this other thing happened. Shit, in thirty years you can get born, grow up, go to college, get married, lose your cherry, have a coupla kids, and buy a house. You can do that, this fuckin’ guinea could certainly hop a plane to Atlanta.”

  “Whoever it was,” Sharky said, “Scardi can lead us to him.”

  “That’s right,” Friscoe said. “But now’s the time we gotta handle this here thing with kid gloves. What it comes down to, we gotta nail this Scardi with his hands full and we got to tie him to La Volte or whoever brought him in to glom Corrigon. If we don’t, you know what’s gonna happen. The goddamn DA ends up with the case and that’s like dropping a diamond in a dirty diaper. Unless we got an iron-clad case against these people, Hanson’ll fuck it up. He’s a legal moron, remember. I mean, shit, we could bribe the fuckin’ jury and he could manage to lose the case.

  “Look at what we got now,” Friscoe continued. “We can put Scardi in the Jackowitz apartment, but at this point we can’t get him from there to Domino’s door with a shotgun in his hands. And we can’t tie him to this La Volte, or whoever the hell his partner in crime is. Knowing all this is one thing, proving it is a whole ’nother ballgame.”

  “So we need to tie Domino to Scardi somehow,” Sharky said.

  “A big somehow,” said Livingston.

  “Okay, I’m going to take on Domino’s apartment,” Sharky said. “It’s been sealed up since the shooting. Maybe there’s something there, an address book, letters, something that can put us closer to Scardi’s accomplice.”

  “Okay. Papa’s still trying to run down Shoes. Your friend Abrams finally went home for a little shuteye. He’ll be back in his workshop there by six. How about you, Arch?”

  Livingston leaned back in the booth and grinned. “I’m gonna do the best thing possible for this machine right now,” he said. “I’m goin’ home and grab a few hours of z’s, because if I don’t Sharky’s gonna have a sleepwalker on his hands tonight.”

  21

  DeLaroza was in a black mood and it got worse as he sat under the subdued lights in his office listening to Kershman’s succinct yet detailed report on what appeared to be several unrelated events at the police station. But the more Kershman talked the more the worms nibbled at DeLaroza’s insides. Bits and pieces came at him. And as Kershman continued, the pieces seemed to start fitting together. The rambling report was beginning to make an uneasy kind of sense to him. A single thread seemed now to be weaving through the information.

  A sheet of paper lay on the desk in front of him, covered with doodles, with names and words. As soon as Kershman finished, DeLaroza dismissed him and then sat and stared at the sheet, at the Freudian shorthand dictated by his subconscious.

  Who were these two, Sharky and Abrams, and what were they up to? The questions hammered at his brain. He began circling words and phrases on the sheet.

  Sharky.

  Abrams.

  Truck driver.

  Nebraska.

  Orgy.

  Chinese orgy.

  Wiretap expert.

  Fingerprints.

  He made a new list, arranging the words in what he felt was a chronological order. Sharky and Abrams. Wiretap expert. Orgy, Chinese orgy. Fingerprints, truck driver, Nebraska. And he added another: post mortem. And then ahead of the words “truck driver” he added another word. “Dead.”

  Finally at the bottom of his new list he added still another word, “Corrigon,” for that had been the first upsetting news. He had hoped that Corrigon’s corpse would elude the police until after Burns was gone. It was an unfortunate stroke, but one which he did not consider serious. There was no way they could possibly connect all this to Corrigon, he thought. He scratched the name off.

  The rest of it was serious. He tried to shrug off the feeling of danger that had turned the worms in his stomach to writhing snakes. The dead “truck driver” from Nebraska had to be Burns, there was no question in his mind now that they knew it. Could Burns have made such an amateurish mistake as to leave fingerprints on the scene? And what about this wiretap of the Chinese orgy? He could not erase the memory of Domino that last night from his mind. Was it possible that this Abrams had bugged Domino’s apartment before she was killed?

  He threw the pencil down. No, these were not unrelated bits and pieces.
These two, Abrams and Sharky, were on to something.

  His panic slowly turned to rage and then to quiet deliberation. Too many dreams were about to come true for him. Hotchins. Pachinko! His own final release from the self-imposed prison in which he had lived for thirty years. He had outwitted governments, the army, the FBI, the CIA, some of the keenest police minds in the world, and now, at this moment, he was threatened by two simple cops. Two cops? Ridiculous!

  He sat that way for perhaps half an hour, almost transfixed as he stared at the doodles. A plan was formulating in his mind. It was daring and dangerous but it would work. He considered alternatives and mentally disposed of each one. The more he considered it, the more perfect the plan became. Finally he began to smile. He reached under the desk and pressed a button. A moment later Chiang loomed in the doorway of the office, his scar accentuated by the soft overhead lights, his sightless eye gleaming like a shining coin in the shadows that masked part of his face.

  “Get the car,” he said. “We must go to the county airport and meet Hotchins.”

  Chiang nodded and was gone. Ten minutes later DeLaroza climbed into the back seat of the Rolls and they pulled out of the indoor parking lot under the building. DeLaroza lowered the window between the front and back seats and spoke in Chinese to Chiang.

  “There is something that must be done,” he said. “It must be done quickly but with great caution. The doctor will help you make the arrangements. The foreign devil, Burns, who was on the junk, has become a danger to me. He is insane. He makes threats. And he also makes mistakes. Also there are two policemen who threaten me.”

  Chiang listened quietly. He asked no questions as DeLaroza outlined his plan. Nothing changed in Chiang’s face, not a muscle. It was as if DeLaroza were telling him the time. When he finished, Chiang nodded again.

  “Remember,” DeLaroza said, “use the shotgun. It must appear like the work of the Gwai-lo. When that is done, then we must deal with Burns. Do not underestimate this man. He is sixty years old, but he is still very quick. He will kill without thinking; it is his nature. He trusts nobody and he is very suspicious. That part of it must be done with great skill.”