The Silent Hour lp-4

by Michael Koryta

  “So you made a suggestion,” I said. “A pitch. If he was willing to help with Sanabria, why not take advantage of the situation.”

  His nod seemed embarrassed. “It was almost a joke. On that day, in that conversation, it really was almost a joke. I mean, it was that ludicrous—place an informant in Sanabria’s sister’s home and use her husband to work him? Crazy, right?”

  “But he agreed,” Ken said.

  “No. He rejected the idea, emphatically, and as time passed, I stopped dropping in on them, refocused in other areas. Then he came back to me. Contacted me by phone and asked if we could meet in person. He seemed very nervous, very agitated. So I drove out to a restaurant in Shaker Heights and met him, and he told me that he’d reconsidered.”

  “Why the change of heart?” Ken asked.

  Dunbar frowned. “The motivation, I’m afraid, was anything but noble. What led him to pick up the phone and call was a complete collapse of his marriage, I believe. His wife wasn’t aware of it yet, but that’s what it was.” He cocked his head at us. “What do you know about Joshua?”

  “Quiet, academic sort,” Ken said. “Interested in the prison system.”

  “Interested,” Dunbar said and nodded. “He was interested in it as a student, not as a participant. Here’s what I can tell you about Joshua—he was a nervous man, a scared man. Insecure. I believe that played a role when he met Alexandra. He saw her fascination with those issues of rehabilitation and reentry, and he ran with it. She was a beautiful woman, and a rich one, the sort who had never before given him the time of day. What more motivation did he need?

  “Joshua’s vision of their married life was that his wife’s obsession would pass, or that a few papers, maybe some small donations, would satisfy it. He was wrong. I’m not surprised the final straw came when she began to hire inmates to work for them. As I’ve said, he was an insecure man. I think those insecurities took his imagination to some wild, dark places.”

  He looked directly at me with a sudden, sharp gaze. “Understand this—while I sit here and discuss the man’s paranoia, I didn’t do anything at that time except feed it. I’m not proud of that, but I won’t lie about it, either. He felt betrayed by his wife, pushed aside in favor of murderers and thieves, and he wanted to hurt her. That was the sum of it. He wanted to hurt her, but he didn’t know how. What could he do? Leave her? Then he’d lose everything. Have an affair? He was an awkward, introverted man, hardly capable of becoming a crusading Casanova. Withhold his money? He didn’t have any. Alexandra was so much stronger than he was in virtually every way a person can have strength. He saw no way to strike back, no way to retaliate for what he viewed as disregard and betrayal. Until he found my card.”

  It had started to rain, and the wind was blowing even stronger now. Dunbar turned his head and looked out at the tossing lake.

  “He was going to feed you information about his brother-in-law?” Ken said.

  “I’m sure he would have been happy to do that,” Dunbar said, looking back at us, “provided he knew anything, but he didn’t. No, he remembered my earlier proposal, the one I’d made as a throwaway line, about seeing that one of the inmates placed in their care was someone who could snitch.”

  “Enter Salvatore Bertoli,” I said.

  “What did he know?” Ken asked. “What was he supposed to know, at least?”

  “I told you to remember Johnny DiPietro’s name from that story about the hotel. Well, Sanabria and he were both partners and rivals. We heard rumors that Sanabria wanted to clip him even before the motel arrest. After the way DiPietro stood pat and didn’t talk he eased up on it temporarily, but before long they were at odds again.”

  “Over what?”

  “Key issues were drugs and associates. Sanabria was very reluctant to be involved with the drug trade at any level. Had heard too many stories about how it brought down his mob buddies all over the country. DiPietro was all about it. DiPietro was also not only willing to network outside the Italians but enthusiastic about it. Sanabria, being old school, didn’t support that or trust it. One of the reasons Sanabria was so furious with DiPietro was his tendency to trust people like Bertoli who committed ignorant, poorly thought-out crimes. He also was at odds with him over his desire to move into the east side drug market, which was generally black territory. Eventually the feud boiled over and Sanabria had him whacked. Bertoli was a witness.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Wiretaps. We got lucky. Almost got lucky, I should say. Caught a conversation between Bertoli and another guy—who’s actually in prison now—and Bertoli started in on DiPietro, saying he knew what happened, but his buddy was smart enough to shut him up and get off the phone. Still, it was clear he’d seen it.”

  “You didn’t question him?”

  “Of course, but he didn’t talk. He was facing prison time on another charge, and we thought we might be able to leverage him then, but . . .” He shrugged. “Sanabria’s not the sort of person you want to snitch on. There was a side element, too. When DiPietro was killed, a significant quantity of heroin and coke disappeared. We had credible information that he’d bought into the supply end of things, that he intended to push his influence into the east side drug trade. This was in direct conflict with what Sanabria wanted, and when the hit was made, the drugs seemed to vanish.”

  “Bertoli’s other charge was for beating the shit out of the truck stop guy and stealing his drugs,” I said. “You think he went after DiPietro’s product?”

  “All we’re sure of is that the product seemed to disappear from Italian hands. My guess is Sanabria claimed it and got rid of it. Sold it to someone else, outside of his circle, probably. Maybe just destroyed it. He didn’t trust drugs.”

  “Let me be clear on the time line,” Ken said. “DiPietro was killed after Bertoli was arrested and went to jail, but you somehow think he was a witness? That makes no sense.”

  “He wasn’t in jail yet. He’d been charged, bonded out, and was awaiting trial. Then DiPietro was murdered, Bertoli witnessed it, and we came back at him hard, pushing for him to talk. He panicked and took the plea bargain and did his time. You want to know why? Because he was afraid of Sanabria. He thought going to jail would prove his trustworthiness, prove that he’d kept his mouth shut. He thought, gentlemen, that jail was the safer place to be. As I just said, Sanabria is not the sort of person you want to snitch on.”

  “You understood that, but you still decided to try again with Cantrell?” I said. “If Bertoli didn’t give Sanabria up to avoid prison, why would he do it after he got out?”

  “I should have turned him away?” Dunbar snapped. “A potential source of Cantrell’s level comes to me and offers to help and I should have turned him away? That’s what you think?”

  I waited a few seconds, wanting to diffuse the tension, and then spoke as gently as I could. “I’m not second-guessing you. I’m just trying to conceive of the situation—all of them living in that house, working against one another. You turned it into a damned gothic mansion, Dunbar. How surprised could you have been when it imploded?”

  “Sanabria had been a target of our investigation for years. Years. We’d had him once, and he slipped out, and we were determined to have him again and make it stick.”

  How’d that work for you? I wanted to ask, but neither Ken nor I spoke, and for a long time all you could hear was the wind.

  “I don’t feel like that was the end of your story,” Ken said eventually. “You told us you got him killed. Who killed him, and why?”

  “Sanabria, of course. For the obvious reason. Can I prove that? No. If I could have, that bastard would be in prison where he belongs. So, yes, what you’re thinking is right—I screwed up again, and he laughed his way through it again.”

  “That’s not what I was thinking,” Ken said.

  “Well, it should be. It damn well should be.”

  “How did it happen?” I said. “Did you have no idea things were going wrong until the
y disappeared, or . . .”

  “I had an idea, but it all went to hell pretty fast. Joshua Cantrell was clumsy in his attempts with Bertoli, displayed his true intentions too early and awkwardly, and Bertoli took off. Moved out of the house. Joshua called to notify me of that, and I thought, well, there’s another missed opportunity. That’s all that I thought. That we’d taken another swing, hadn’t made contact, but no big deal. Then a week later Bertoli was dead. As soon as I found out about that, I went looking for Joshua. He and his wife were gone.”

  “How are you so sure it was Sanabria, then?” Ken said.

  Dunbar frowned. “Did you miss the summary your partner gave? That bit about the gothic mansion? To use his word, it imploded. It surely did. Think about it—we were attempting to get information about Sanabria, we panicked Bertoli, and then he was killed and the Cantrells vanished. Where do you think the blame rests?”

  Ken didn’t answer. Dunbar stared at him for a moment, and then he said softly, “That’s a poor question. The blame, as I’ve already told you, rests here. Rests with me. But the bloodshed, Mr. Merriman? That’s not my doing. That’s Dominic Sanabria.”

  “You must have questioned him,” I said. “Tried to connect him to Bertoli’s death.”

  “Of course we did. True to form, he had an alibi seven layers deep. Actually, calling it an alibi wouldn’t be fair. He didn’t kill Bertoli personally—I’m fairly certain of that—but he had it done. I am even more certain of that.”

  “Then who got the call?” I said, thinking Harrison or Ruzity. “Who carried out the orders?”

  “That one, I cannot answer. Only one person alive can. Sanabria himself—and good luck getting him to tell you.”

  “Two people,” I said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Sanabria could answer it, and so could the person he used. That’s who we’re looking for.”

  “I’m not going to be much more help with that,” Dunbar said. “You should talk to the detective who got the Cantrell case in Pennsylvania. Graham.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You know Graham?”

  “Not well. I’ve had this same conversation with him, that’s all.” Then, seeing the rise of anger in my face, he said, “Surely you didn’t think you were the first people to make these connections?”

  “Not anymore,” I said. Part of me was embarrassed for being naive enough to believe just that, but more of me was pissed off at Graham. I’d told him I’d help provided I was given the real score, understood the situation as well as he did. The lying prick had promised me that was the case.

  “You’re sure Sanabria killed Joshua Cantrell, or had him killed,” Ken said to Dunbar.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, what about Alexandra?” I said. “Do you really think he murdered his own sister, or do you think she’s still alive somewhere?”

  “That,” John Dunbar said, “is the one question I’ve been wondering about for the past twelve years.”

  19

  __________

  I never knew my mother, but I know plenty of her expressions. She died when I was three, hit by a drunk driver at noon on a Sunday. She’d just left church; he’d just left a tip for the waitress who delivered his fifth Bloody Mary. Ordinarily, we’d have all been in the car together, but my sister and I were sick, sharing some sort of virus, and my father stayed home to watch us. Mom decided to go by herself. Every now and then, generally when my mind’s immersed in something, I’ll have a sudden sense that I can remember her voice, that I can hear the way she spoke. Then my conscious brain shifts over to try to trap it and it’s gone. Just that quick. I’ll hear her cadence perfectly in some secret lobe of memory, try to focus on it, and scare it off. She’s in there somewhere, though. I know that she is.

  While the voice eludes me, the expressions do not. My father recalled them often when I was growing up, and in a way that’s how she came to exist for me: Your mother always said . . .

  One favorite phrase, evidently, was head-spinner. As in, How was your day? Well, it was a head-spinner. It was how she referred to those days when things came too fast, too unexpected, too complicated.

  My day? One hell of a head-spinner.

  We’d gone out that morning thinking that Mark Ruzity might be able to give us some insight into the Cantrells. Instead, he’d given us John Dunbar, which at the time had felt like a significant breakthrough. Felt even more like that when Dunbar poured himself a Scotch and settled in to explain how he’d gotten Joshua Cantrell killed. Then he’d delivered the capstone: Talk to Detective Graham; of course he already knows this.

  A head-spinner.

  Had we gained anything? As I sat on the roof watching the sun fade and streetlamps come on and waiting for Amy to arrive, I tried to determine that, and couldn’t. A hell of a lot of information had come our way, and that felt like progress. The realization that Graham already had the information, though . . . yeah, that pretty well killed the sense of progress.

  A head-spinner. You bet your ass.

  I’d dropped Ken at his hotel and left him on his own for the night. Inhospitable, maybe, but I felt a strong need to be away from him and Graham and Dunbar and anyone else who’d ever heard of the Cantrells. We’d meet again in the morning, and then we’d see where it stood. Graham was the one who could tell us that. He hadn’t answered when I called him, so I left a message informing him we’d made a major break and he needed to drive up the next morning to discuss it. Since then, he’d called five times and I hadn’t answered or called him back. He probably wanted to avoid the trip, and I wanted him to make it. The son of a bitch could explain his lies in person.

  Couldn’t be mad at him for lying, though. That’s what Joe would tell me. I was a civilian, Graham was a cop. Why would he tell me everything he knew? When had I ever done that for a civilian? It was a game, all of it was, and Graham was playing one version with me while I played another with Harrison. I wondered who in the hell kept track of the big board, though.

  It was full night when Amy finally arrived, and we sat together as the temperature dropped. No radio tonight, no baseball game. Just talk, lots of it, the two of us tossing questions but no answers.

  “You know who I feel sorry for?” Amy said after one long lull. She was curled up tight in her chair, sleeves pulled down over her hands, clearly freezing but not willing to speak of going inside until I did.

  “Lincoln Perry, for getting sucked into this nightmare?”

  “No, you’re doing a good enough job of feeling sorry for Lincoln Perry tonight.”

  “This is why I gave up being single. Support like that.”

  “Stop. You know it’s true. I’ve never seen anyone get as melodramatic over anything as you do when you’ve been lied to.”

  I smiled. “It’s my subtle way of ensuring you always tell me the truth.”

  “Subtle, sure. Now, can I say who I feel sorry for? Alexandra. I mean, step back and think about it. This woman comes from a family that should have its own HBO series, she somehow emerges sane and motivated to help people, and when she tries to do that her husband turns against her, tries to betray her brother, and gets himself killed. All of this just to hurt her.”

  “Her brother talked about her as if she’s alive,” I said. “If that’s true, how does he know it? And if that’s true, how much does she understand?”

  Amy tried to nod but lost it in midshiver as the wind picked up. I got to my feet, pulled her up and toward me, and wrapped my arms around her and rubbed her back. She was shaking against me.

  “You look like you’re ready to go in,” I said.

  “Only if you are.”

  I laughed. “Okay, that’s support.”

  I turned, ready to move for the stairs, but she stopped me.

  “Imagine what that would feel like,” she said, her voice muffled against my chest.

  “Imagine what?”

  “If she is alive, and she does understand. If she knows that her brother killed her husband
, and if she knows why it happened.”

  I didn’t answer, just took her hand and guided her toward the steps. The wind was blowing harder now, and I was feeling the cold, too.

  Graham rose to the bait. When I finally played his messages the next morning, he cursed me for not returning his calls, then said he’d be up, though not until afternoon. He sounded curious, and I was glad. We didn’t have a damn thing that was new to him, but if he wanted to jerk me around, I was happy to return the favor.

  Ken came into the office ten minutes after I did, with a cup of coffee in each hand and a stack of papers held between his chin and his chest. He swung the door shut with his foot, set one cup down in front of me, and then lifted his chin, spilling the papers across my desk.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  I took a drink of the coffee and waved at the papers he’d dumped on the desk. “So what’s all this?”

  “When do you think that first bust with Dunbar and Sanabria went down?” he said. “The one that got screwed up by the informant and the motel room?”

  “A while ago. He was talking about using a pager.”

  “Try twenty years.”

  “Twenty?”

  “I was surprised, too. Dunbar talked about it like it had been a few years, right? Not twenty of them.”

  “I don’t suppose it changes anything,” I said, gathering the pages into a stack and pulling them toward me. “How’d you find that out?”

  “Library. They’ve got good newspaper archives.”

  “You went last night?” Now I felt guilty about blowing him off, spending the night with Amy while he was working.

  “What else am I going to do? Can only watch so much ESPN.”

  He’d apparently printed out every article mentioning Sanabria or Dunbar or Bertoli, and it amounted to quite a collection. I flipped through them, skimming most, reading a few completely. Dunbar’s account seemed accurate enough.

  “Dunbar’s been around for a long time,” I said, looking at the dates on the articles that referenced him. They started in the late seventies.