The Defendants: Crime Fiction & Legal Thriller (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 1)

by John Ellsworth

  Like the Governor, Bang Bang also lived on the Gold Coast, except while the Governor’s residence was English Countryside and consisted of a home and attached three-car, Moltinari’s spread was a Historic Register enclave walled in by indigenous rock and mortar, and consisted of a 10,000 square foot home and four outbuildings, including a guest house where his bodyguards passed their off-time with high-stakes poker, craps, and a steady stream of Michigan Avenue hookers whose arrivals and departures spanned about one hour apiece.

  Bang Bang left home that day handcuffed to a Halliburton aluminum briefcase. He exited the gates in a bullet-proof Cadillac sedan. He was backed up by a Cadillac SUV bristling with guns behind black-out windows. The windows were illegal but the cops knew better than to hassle one of the Governor’s key friends. In short, Bang Bang was immune. He enforced the Governor’s state contracts. In return the Governor protected Bang Bang’s crime syndicate. That’s the way it had been done for 100 years in Chicago and it wasn’t ever going to change. Not as long as the Chicago politicians and the Chicago mob were in charge and running things.

  Bang Bang’s entourage headed southeast, toward Lake Michigan. As they clipped along at twenty over and careened around corners a lookout was kept for other cars that might try to cut them off or follow too close. Those idiots were menaced with a gun barrel or a killer stare-down from one of the vehicles. Mostly, though, the people of Chicago knew that there were certain cars and certain neighbors one simply did not approach. To do so was to risk life and limb.

  At 3:45 Bang Bang’s procession screeched into the Governor’s lot and proceeded to park. A small army of Illinois State Policemen, all burly and scowling, peered inside the cars and cautiously allowed the visitors to exit their vehicles. They were prudently searched but allowed to retain their firearms unless going inside to meet with the governor.

  Bang Bang was first out. The briefcase dangled from his wrist while his hands went on top the car. He was frisked by an angry looking sergeant. A state trooper escorted him to a side door of the Governor’s house, and knocked twice. An interior state trooper took him from there. The leftover police and mobsters lolled around the two black vehicles. They smoked. They engaged in stare-downs. Nobody minded; everybody stared right back. Here were nature’s natural enemies come together on solemn ground, where the outside rules didn’t apply, where the lions let the lions alone. There was a high degree of mutual respect and mutual distaste. Each group had its orders. You better damn well get along with the other side if you want to keep working this easy duty. Everyone obeyed. At the end of the day it was easy and safe duty. No one would ever be insane enough to make an attempt on either the Governor or on Bang Bang.

  Bang Bang Moltinari followed the state trooper into the Governor’s office. “Morning, Your Honor,” he snarled at the Governor, upset that he had been called away from family on a Sunday. His son was home for mid-term break from Harvard where he was pre-law, and his twin daughters were home from the University of Illinois in Urbana.

  “You’re looking old today,” the Governor said, and choked on laughter.

  Bang Bang was in his early fifties and had come up in the mob the hard way. He had started out running numbers and girls on Chicago’s West Side, and then he caught the eye of Jimmy Novalici, a Lieutenant in the mob who was expert at cargo hijacking from O’Hare International.

  Bang Bang had become wealthy exploiting interstate freight and gunning down those who interfered. He was tall, wore his black hair combed straight back and his teeth were perfect. His smile stopped the ladies cold. He had never had a love problem; they all adored and worshipped him and he was very generous with the gifts ladies like. Cartier, Australian Pink Diamonds (a lady’s best friend), Rolex—all of the good names found their ways onto his ladies’ fingers, necks, and wrists.

  “Hello, Bangman,” the Governor said, using his pet name for the mob boss.

  “We got problems get me out this cold Sunday?”

  “We do. We got some customers who are neglecting their payments to our little fund.”

  “What, we couldn’t do this Monday?”

  “I’m leaving for a governors’ conference in San Francisco after lunch tomorrow. Too late. Don’t worry, I’ve only got three names for you.”

  “I’m listening. Who’s first?”

  The Governor pulled a page from the back of the legal pad on his desk. “Great Lakes Underpass and Overpass, LLC. Late as always.”

  “GLUO again? I warned that son of a bitch to keep up with his contracts. How much?”

  “Well, I’m down $150K for the month, and GLUO’s portion is thirty-five.”

  “Got it,” said Bang Bang. “A call from me will jar this guy loose. Next.”

  “Midland Freeway and Secondary. They have four paving jobs open east of Springfield and the management has changed due to a shareholders’ restructure. The new owner is playing dumb, like he’s never heard of us.”

  “We’ll visit him first thing in the morning. We’ll make sure he understands the program. How much we light?”

  “Fifty grand give or take five. Fifty makes me happy at this point.”

  “Done. Who’s the third?”

  “A nobody out of Orbit. Name of Victor Harrow, Harrow and Sons Construction.”

  “Poor Victor. He picked a damn poor time to stop paying if he’s the reason I’m over here on Sunday.”

  “He’s a large part of the reason. He’s into me for one-ten.”

  “110G’s?”

  “That’s right.”

  Bang Bang spread his hands. “Look, you gotta tell me these things right away. This guy’s way over on the skim. He’ll cry like a pig when we demand the whole play up front.”

  “Let him cry. My people tell me he’s been paid three-fourths on his bid contract, there’s only about a fourth left, and he says ‘Enough,’ he says he’s done with us. We’re in for half, he’s paid less than a fourth.”

  “Stupid SOB. What do you want from me here?”

  “Just put the fear in him. He’s a nobody. But he’s high profile in his crapola little town.”

  “Johnny Blades?”

  “Johnny’s perfect. Just don’t break anything on the guy. We only need him scared. And tell Johnny not to come back without at least fifty grand on him. Persistence is what this is going to take. Johnny might be down there a couple days.”

  Bang Bang smiled. “You don’t know Johnny. He can say more to a man in thirty seconds than anyone I’ve ever known. And I’ve known plenty.”

  “I don’t doubt that, Bangman. I don’t doubt that.”

  “So what else we got?”

  “Like I say, I’m $150K light this month. Make it a happy holiday for me, yes?”

  “Done. Until next time.”

  The Governor’s eyes narrowed. He gave Bang Bang his coldest look. “Aren’t you forgetting something,” he said, holding up his hand while his face glowed red. ”Don’t you have a little something for me?”

  Bang Bang smiled and opened the briefcase. He pulled out a stack of banded $100 bills and bounced them against his knee. “It’s all there. $75K, all from yesterday, all from Michigan Avenue.”

  “Bless those merchants. They are going to be very happy when we allow them to open for Black Friday on Thanksgiving Day. They deserve no less.”

  “Black Friday, Pink Tuesday, who gives a big damn?”

  “I do, Bangman, I do.”

  3

  Johnny “The Blade” Bladanni pulled the cell from his inside coat pocket. He hit speed dial and Bang Bang Moltinari immediately answered, “Go, Blade.”

  “This guy got a bus for an office?”

  “Could be.”

  “Why didn’t no one tell me it was a bus? I’ve never broke in a bus before.”

  “Don’t break in. Get invited. Goodbye.”

  Johnny frowned at the disconnection. He was a swarthy man, early thirties, who looked early twenties, with his baby face and baby blues. But there everything baby about
him ended. He was wearing a silver sharkskin suit with $2000 Gucci’s, silver shades hiding his eyes, and a Sixties style pompadour such as the East Coast crooners wore.

  The car was one of Bang Bang’s Escalade SUV’s, black in color, with plates that were protected by the State of Illinois DMV in case Johnny got pulled over. The designation meant to any law enforcement officer: Hands Off, The Driver is Connected. He was sitting across the street from Victor Harrow’s construction yard in Orbit, where the purple bus sat just outside the gate, ready to roar off to a troubled job site on a moment’s notice.

  Johnny was parked westbound, headed toward Orbit, and he had no flashers blinking. The lane he was in was a traffic lane but he really didn’t give a damn. Let the fools figure it out, he thought. Besides, he’d only be a minute or two.

  He felt around in his shirt pocket and produced a driver’s license photo of Victor Harrow. “Ugly bastard,” he commented. “Bet you ain’t gettin’ much action.”

  An 18-wheeler came up behind and blew out its air brakes sliding to a stop behind Johnny.

  Johnny flipped the guy off, which wasn’t seen by anyone due to the black windows. He laid down rubber and wheeled the Caddy from the right lane across three lanes of traffic, up and across the driveway, and nosed in beside Victor’s bus. “Now eat it and die,” he muttered to the trucker.

  He checked his hair in the rearview and went inside.

  “I’m here to meet with Victor Harrow,” Johnny said to the gum smacker behind the first desk.

  The girl looked up from her screen. “Is he expecting you?”

  “He oughta be, you get my drift.”

  “Who shall I tell him is calling?”

  “Just tell him I’m here from the Governor’s office. He’ll understand.”

  “Don’t you have a name, Sir?” The gum smacking increased in speed along with the woman’s frustration. “Mister Harrow is very busy and it’s my job to screen all drop-ins.”

  “Tell him it’s Johnny Bladanni from Chicago. That name opens lotsa doors.”

  “Very well.” She buzzed Victor on the telephone and waited. No answer. She buzzed again. Still no answer. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bladna—“

  “Bladanni. B-L-A-D-A-N-N-I.”

  “I’m sorry, but it looks like Mister Harrow might have slipped out for lunch.”

  “And what time does he get back?”

  “Probably late tonight. He has stops to make at job sites.”

  “What’s he driving?”

  “Why, you plan on pulling him over?”

  “No, you know, just in case I happen to see him.”

  “Company truck, purple top, cream bottom. Says ‘Harrow’—“

  “I get it ‘Harrow and Sons’ down the side. Am I close?”

  The gum smacker sniffed. “Will that be all, Mister Bladanni?”

  “For now. Just for now.”

  “Do you have a card you’d like to leave for Mister Harrow?”

  “Lady, you don’t want to see my card,” Johnny smiled, patting his inside pocket where he kept his ten inch switchblade. “Ain’t nobody lookin’ to see my card. Later.”

  “All right, I’ll tell him you stopped by.”

  “No, let’s make it a surprise when I come back tonight.”

  “Goodbye, Sir. Have a nice afternoon.”

  “In this town? What, you know somethin’ fun to do here that I ain’t figured out already?”

  “Thanks again.”

  “Later.”

  * * *

  Victor Harrow was lunching on short ribs and noodles, the noon special at the Red Bird Inn, a mile west of Orbit. It was a low-slung whitewashed restaurant from the ‘Forties, with a sign out front in the shape of a ten foot high cardinal. At night the sign blinked red and white. The joint was known locally as the Red Bird Inn. It was a favorite hangout of farmers and truckers who had done business at the sale barn across the road, where pigs and cows were sold off to the local slaughterhouse, another mile further west.

  Victor Harrow’s lunch guest was Bud Leinager, attorney at law, who nested in a Victorian office one block west of the Orbit town square. His office was in a section of town where several of the buildings on the formerly residential street were being reformulated as professionals’ offices: dentists, lawyers, and a family medical practice, plus two CPA firms. Plus a stockbroker who was always desperate for sales, as rural Illinoisans will invest in land much more quickly than they will consider intangibles such as stocks and bonds.

  Bud was the son of D.B. Leinager, the 89-year-old lawyer who drank coffee with Thaddeus. Bud was known around Orbit as a ne’er-do-well who’d rather tell a lie than the truth even when the truth would win him a gold star for the day. He was a natural born prevaricator and fabricator: in short, he had found the perfect job in the practice of law, where things are never what they’re said to be.

  It was the afternoon before the night when Ermeline Ransom was drugged and tattooed at Victor Harrow’s bus. Victor didn’t know yet that Johnny the Blade Bladanni was in town to see him, and so he was dining in relative peace. In fact Victor had never even heard of Johnny the Blade.

  Victor’s face was broad and pitted on the front. He’d started his career as a pipeline welder, working as an Ironworker on the Alaska Pipeline, before hanging up his helmet and gloves and returning home to Orbit, where he established Harrow and Sons Construction in 1982. As a welder in Alaska there were days he just wore goggles and the constant sparks and hot metal had burned his face repeatedly. He wasn’t disfigured but anyone who knew construction would have guessed his line of work just by looking upon his face. He was clinically obese at 275 for he had never grown to be six feet and the charts at his doctor’s office were all in red and screamed that he needed to lose 85 pounds. Victor ignored that advice, of course, and went right on eating and drinking like he always had. Everyone in Orbit joined him in that; food was a key solace for people whose lives were paid for at an hourly rate, too often minimum wage, and who had too many kids and not enough joy.

  “Bud, I’ve got a problem” Victor said, and forked a load of rib meat and noodles into his mouth.

  “Mmm,” Bud muttered and went back to carefully slicing away the gristle from the meat. “Somebody needs to talk to the cook. This ain’t meat, it’s fat.”

  “I say I’ve got a problem.”

  “What happened? You stiff some sub? Hey, it’s going around, Vic. Try not to lose any sleep over it.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then what?”

  Victor slurped his iced tea. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I haven’t been paying my kickbacks.”

  “You what? Have you gone nuts, Victor? You always pay upstairs,” he hissed across the table. “That’s playing with fire to stiff the upstairs.”

  “I know, I know that. It’s just—I don’t know, with Marleen and Bruce doing so well, I started thinking. ‘What the hell am I doing?’ I asked myself. ‘Why am I paying off the Governor?’ After all, Bruce isn’t and he’s doing gangbusters. I wanted to flip them off. I wanted to yell ‘Hey, screw you!’ one time. It just got to me.”

  “How much you behind?”

  “It’s the Springfield-Chicago job. Probably a hundred.”

  “A hundred as in thousand? Are you serious, man?” Bud paused, his fork halfway to his mouth. He wasn’t sure he heard right. “You’ve held out a hundred grand on the Governor and his boys?”

  “’Fraid so.”

  Bud looked around and ducked his head. “Hey, you don’t mind I move to a different table, do you? You’re like radioactive, my friend.”

  Victor picked apart a slab of rib. “So what do I do?”

  “Pay up. Now, like yesterday.”

  “And if I haven’t got it?”

  “Borrow it. Sell something. Sell some of Betty Anne Harrow’s diamonds.”

  “C’mon.”

  “Hey, I am coming on. You’re about to go up in flames. Sorry, Vic, but I can’t help you wi
th this one. This is way outside my league.”

  “Who can?”

  “Help you? Moses, Adam, and the First National Bank. Go see Brody Mathewson this afternoon over at First National. Go in hock if you have to, but call your bag man and let him know you have the dough before closing time today. Capisce?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And call me tonight. Let me know you’ve paid up. If something happens to you I’m a witness that way.”

  “Lot of good that does me.”

  At just that moment, Johnny Bladanni entered the Red Bird Inn. All eyes turned to him as one because, first, he was a stranger and therefore suspect but even more, two, in his sharkskin and Gucci’s and silver shades he was light-years out of place. Everyone gave him the “New Guy Stare” for fifteen seconds, and then returned to stuffing their faces and talking with their mouths full. Johnny, meantime, compared the photo in his hand to the man sitting across from Bud Leinager and he instantly knew he had located Victor Harrow.

  He brushed the hostess aside and glided coolly back to Victor’s table.

  Johnny didn’t bother with an introduction. Instead announced, “I need to talk to you.”

  “And you are?” Victor asked, eyeing the man with all due suspicion.

  “Let’s just say the Governor sent me.”

  At this, Bud Leinager shrank even lower in his chair. He looked off to the side. He was neither hearing any of this nor participating in it. Without a word he suddenly lurched upright, sliding his wooden captain’s chair back with a loud “Squawk!” He grabbed the lunch bill and headed for the cash register.

  “Nice,” said Johnny admiringly. “I like a man who knows when to get back to work.”

  “You still haven’t told me your name, Mister.”

  “Bladanni. My friends call me The Blade.”

  “Look, I don’t have it. It’s all been spent on overhead. It’s all gone. Sorry.”

  “No, friend, that’s where you’re wrong. You see the Governor’s share is solid as gold. It’s never gone. It’s always around somewhere. Now we just have to find it.”