Payback

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  “Nice to get out of the office,” Ray said, after putting in his order for a bacon cheeseburger with the works, a side of sweet potato fries, and a large diet soda. “And nice to put something in my stomach other than that organic shit my wife is telling me to eat. If I never have another Greek yogurt in my life, I’ll die a happy man.”

  I matched the chief’s order and handed the waiter our menus. “We keep eating lunches like the one we just ordered, we won’t only die happy, we’ll die young.”

  “Let’s just hope it takes more than one of these meals to do the trick,” the chief said.

  “So, I’m guessing you read the two files I sent over. Otherwise we wouldn’t be sitting here,” I said.

  “What?” the chief said. “I need an excuse to break bread with an old friend? But, yes, I did read through both files. Twice, as a matter of fact.”

  “And you think I’m biting off more than I can chew,” I said.

  “That’s true, I do think that,” the chief said. “But I also think that won’t matter to you. You’re going in on both whether I back you or not.”

  “Let’s take it one at a time,” I said. “Start with Randy Jenkins. Where are you on that one?”

  “Same place we’re at with all of Kenwood’s cases,” the chief said. “The DA has asked that we reinvestigate as best we can all his closed homicides.”

  “He was top gun in that arena,” I said. “He had to be putting away six-to-eight long-term sentences a year, easy. That would total out to a small room full of case folders.”

  “Fifty-six at last count,” the chief said. “That’s not including the ones that have already been dismissed due to new evidence and DNA results.”

  “So you were going to hand my crew one of these no matter what,” I said. “You don’t have the manpower to handle that kind of load on top of all the new cases coming in.”

  “I was thinking of handing you more than one,” the chief said, pausing as the waiter rested both our platters in front of us. “But I need to rethink that, since you have this other case that’s going to take up more than half of your time.”

  “Let me put my feelings for Kenwood on the table,” I said. “You know me and him were never on the same wavelength. The same with Pearl. Neither one of us would piss on the guy if he were on fire. He came on the job dirty and only got dirtier as the years went on. And he didn’t pay any price for putting innocent young men behind bars for double decades of time. In fact, he got promoted. More than once. What I don’t know and am almost afraid to ask is, was he acting on his own, or were there others in on it with him? I mean was there anyone—the brass, the prosecutors, judges—that knew what his play was?”

  The chief stayed silent for a few moments, pouring ketchup on his fries and burger and taking a long pull on his soft drink. “I would love to tell you the answer to your question is no,” he said. “But the God’s honest truth is I don’t know. Is it possible? Yes. He could have had someone on the inside, maybe more than one someone, who knew what he was up to.”

  “What would be in it for them?”

  “A conviction is a conviction, Tank,” the chief said. “You know that well as I do. To some people it doesn’t matter much if the guy sitting on the other side of the table is guilty or not.”

  “In other words, as with every case we work, don’t trust anybody,” I said.

  “Nobody but me and the ones on your team,” the chief said. “It’s the safest route to take, especially when it comes to Eddie Kenwood. He’s still got a lot of friends in the department, those still on the job and those off.”

  “You must have crossed swords with him once or twice,” I said. “Would be hard not to, I would think.”

  “Let’s just say we’re not friends,” the chief said. “And leave it at that for now. But hear me when I tell you—watch your back on this one. There are great cops, good cops, average cops, and those just looking to put in their twenty and cash in on a pension. That covers about eighty percent of the force. Then you got the twenty percent that are bad. To my way of thinking, Eddie Kenwood is at the very top of that corrupt little pyramid.”

  “You’re starting to make me think looking into my brother’s accident is going to be a cakewalk,” I said.

  “Don’t kid yourself,” the chief said. “That one could turn out to be even worse.”

  “What do you know about the firm he worked for?” I asked. “Besides what was in the file?”

  “On the outside, they are as they appear to be,” the chief said. “A high-end, big-time white-shoe accounting firm. They have a long roster of A-list clients, most, if not all, coming to them with seven-figure bank accounts. They pay their bills, keep their accounts clean, and don’t do anything that might draw the attention of either the SEC or the U.S. Attorney.”

  “Okay,” I said, nodding, “what about on the inside?”

  “The shoes are a shade darker,” the chief said. “I’m working off rumors here—there’s been no solid evidence to this point for us to go anywhere near them legally. But if even half the rumors are true, what they pull in illegally is a dozen times more lucrative than what they claim on the legal end.”

  “So, how come nobody’s been able to touch them?” I asked. “They’ve been around for years. You don’t just decide to go dark overnight.”

  “It’s not from lack of trying, let me tell you,” the chief said. “They’ve been on our radar for at least five, six years. With the Southern District, even longer. We’ve sniffed around a lot, tried to dig out one or two disgruntled former employees, but nothing came of it. As good as they are at making money, they’re even better at covering their tracks. And then Jack came along, and he started to shed some light on their operation.”

  “Jack?” I said, not bothering to hide my surprise. “I only thought he was planning to blow the whistle. I didn’t know he had already taken his first steps.”

  The chief nodded. “Your nephew’s files all point to that,” he said. “But he wouldn’t have any way of knowing that your brother was already talking to the U.S. Attorney. I didn’t know myself until I started reading through the files. I put in a call to Dee Dee Jacobs and she filled me in.”

  “How long had he been talking to them?”

  “Not long,” the chief said. “They were just going through the preliminaries. The basics—would he wear a wire, xerox statements, would he be willing to testify. But he gave them more than enough to have them sit up and pay attention. Last time they all met was four days before his accident.”

  “The firm must have suspected something,” I said. “Maybe they put a tail on him or wired up his phone. Dee Dee runs a tight ship, so I wouldn’t look to her office to drop a dime on my brother.”

  “Not likely,” the chief said. “They may be a white-shoe firm, but they wear black gloves. These are not your meek-accountant types by any means.”

  “I know from what Chris dug up that they cook the books,” I said. “And they invest money for a few shady characters. How much deeper than that does it go?”

  “We’re talking money from drug cartels and the Russian mob, dirty money that’s dry-cleaned and stored in waterfront condos and car dealerships, real estate agencies, any other place where it’s easy to shell your money.”

  “That’s not something the partners would want their employees to know.”

  “I’m guessing not,” the chief said. “Too much of a risk. The top two layers of the company are in on it for sure and making too much money to complain. From the middle tier on down, they’re just accountants paying the clients’ bills and mailing out their tax returns.”

  “And somehow Jack got wind of what was going on,” I said.

  “He was working his way up the masthead,” the chief said. “Probably got close enough to see what was going on and clearly didn’t like it.”

  “He must ha
ve done something to tip the partners, lead them to suspect he was talking to someone outside the firm,” I said.

  “It doesn’t take much, Tank,” the chief said. “Could be as simple as leaving a piece of paper in the Xerox machine, a stray email open on a laptop. Or maybe they just decided they could no longer trust him. These guys don’t stay in business by being careless. They survive by being ruthless.”

  I pushed away my platter, leaned back in the booth, and stared at the chief. “How far can I get with what’s in Chris’s file?”

  “There may be enough for a search warrant,” the chief said. “But that’ll get you nowhere, since you won’t know what the hell to search for. You’re going to need help on this one, Tank. You’ll need someone working with them on the inside and you’ll need some muscle on the outside. I’ll do all I can from my end. But it’s going to take somebody with bigger muscles than mine to break through that wall. And that’s where the U.S. Attorney comes in. You get Dee Dee on your side with this, she’ll be a big help.”

  “I’ll reach out to her,” I said. “As far as the inside guy, I’m a step ahead of you on that one.”

  “Anybody I know?”

  “Tramonti,” I said. “If they’re as corrupt as we think, then they’ll jump at the shot to handle Carmine’s money. It’s no secret he’s a made man, deals only in cash, and wants his money parked where no one can touch it. And if there’s a hiccup along the way, he’s not going to run to the cops with a complaint.”

  “It’s also no secret that the two of you know each other,” the chief said. “And they need dig only just below the surface to know you date his daughter.”

  I shrugged. “They probably know all that already,” I said. “They’ll see what we want them to see—an old-school gangster looking to hide some cash. The last person on earth a guy like that would share that info with would be an ex-cop like me, friend or not. And me keeping company with his daughter would be even less of a concern. You cut to the quick, chief, he’s still mob and I’m still cop.”

  “Good call,” the chief said. “How much of his money is he going to put up?”

  “Not a nickel,” I said with a smile. “He’s here to help us out, gain their trust, dangle other old mob guys with pockets full of cash in front of their eyes. But he’s not going to risk his own dough.”

  “You need six figures going in for them to take a meeting,” the chief said.

  “He’ll have money,” I said. “It just won’t be his.”

  The chief smiled back and he finished his soda. “So, you were already planning to go see Dee Dee. Hit her up for a loan.”

  “She’s someone we both know and trust. I can’t handle this just with my crew and Carmine. This is new terrain for me. I’ll need a guide to help me navigate the waters and I can’t think of anybody better.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me,” the chief said. “Just go in with your eyes open. On both cases. Kenwood’s not going to take a step back any more than the guys at Curtis, Strassman, and Randolph are. They won’t care you’re an ex-cop or about Chris, Connie, or anyone on your team. There’s a lot at stake for everybody involved, and when that’s the case, more often than not, people get hurt.”

  “There’s more at stake than you imagine,” I said. “The Jenkins case puts me up against a guy I’m ashamed to call a cop, and one of us is no doubt going to bleed before it ends. But the one involving my brother could ruin me, Chief.”

  The chief stayed quiet for several moments, letting my words settle in. “Ruin you how, Tank?” he finally asked. “What exactly are you afraid of?”

  I slid two twenties under my platter and eased my way out of the booth. “I hope like hell you never find out, Chief,” I said, shaking his hand. “I hope to hell no one does.”

  17.

  U.S. ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, SOUTHERN DISTRICT, LOWER MANHATTAN

  THAT SAME DAY

  I WAS OUTSIDE THE U.S. ATTORNEY’S office, waiting for her closed-door meeting to conclude. While I walked in small circles in the large reception area, I sipped the room-temperature bottle of water I’d been offered by an assistant—much to her annoyance. A desk piled with folders clearly needed her full attention. As a rule, city cops and the feds don’t mingle well. The atmosphere has improved since the horror of September 11 brought on a reluctant sense of unity among all branches of law enforcement, but still there are remnants of distrust. Federal agents are higher on the pecking order than city cops, both in salary and prestige. I never met a cop who didn’t feel the feds were overrated and nowhere near as good as we were at cracking cases, and the reverse no doubt holds true, as well.

  The feds dress better, have bigger budgets, and carry more weight inside a courtroom and with the public at large. Don’t believe me? Think about this: What scares you more, an RMP pulling you over on a traffic stop or an FBI agent ringing your doorbell? They tend to have years more education and can claim jurisdiction over any case a cop has been working.

  None of this ever bothered me while I was on the job, and I enjoyed my time on joint task forces. From my way of thinking, we were all there to do the same job, and who got paid what or who got their suits from Brooks Brothers and who got them from Men’s Wearhouse made little difference to me. I was there for one reason only—to crack a case.

  But cops, like anyone in any other profession you can think of, love to piss and moan. And when they do, there is no one—aside from a defense lawyer—with a bigger bull’s-eye on their back than a federal agent. Me and Pearl were having a drink one night with Gio Fernandez, one of the best undercovers we ever worked with, when he started regaling the packed bar with the story of his adventures with four FBI agents. “They called me in to help them execute a warrant,” Gio said. He was short, muscular, with a shaved head that gleamed under the bright lights of the bar. “I meet them up by Jo Jo’s—you know, the bar up on Lenox. I drive up in my beat-up Oldsmobile, wearing a Yankees long-sleeve T and a pair of Levi’s. These four suckers jump out of a black SUV with tinted windows, each one looking like they were there for a GQ photo shoot.”

  “All under forty and in great shape, right?” Pearl asked.

  “Exactly,” Gio said. “I mean, they looked like fuckin’ Tom Cruise, if he were four inches taller and a Protestant. Anyways, in place of a suit jacket, they’re each wearing a blue windbreaker with FBI written in large letters across the back. Then one of them pops the back lid of the SUV and pulls out four sledgehammers. Can you believe that shit? We have to go to the boss to voucher extra gas money while we’re on a stakeout, and these fuckers hand out sledgehammers like they’re working on a construction crew.”

  “Why do you need a sledgehammer to execute a warrant?” I asked Gio. “Not to mention four of them.”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking, standing there scratching my Puerto Rican ass and wondering what the hell these guys were planning,” Gio said. “Keep in mind, it’s not even six in the morning, nobody—and I mean nobody—on the street except for a couple of junkies on the nod, huddled in a corner. The feds walk over to me, hand me the warrant, and the leader of the pack asks, ‘How do you want to handle this?’ ”

  Gio paused to take a long pull on a longneck bottle of beer. “I look at the warrant and turns out we’re standing right in front of the building. It had one of those glass doors. I suggest we just kick in the door and make the grab. Odds are the guy they want is sprawled out on a bed or a couch, sleeping off a drunk. ‘Just watch out for pit bulls,’ I told them. ‘You know how these fuckin’ dealers love those pits.’ ”

  “Got a scar on my left leg to prove your point,” Pearl said.

  “I’m about to head toward the door when the leader of the pack reaches out a hand, holds me in place, and hands me a sledgehammer. I was about to argue but figured, what the hell, ain’t my show, you know? I’m just along for the ride. So I take the sledgehammer an
d walk up to the door. Now, keep in mind, I don’t know jack shit about sledgehammers. I can barely hammer in a nail. Asking me to take down a door with a sledgehammer is asking for a boatload of trouble.”

  “Did you bang on the door with it?” I asked.

  “Better than that, Tank,” Gio said. “I stepped close to the door and got into my batting stance, crouching down like Derek Jeter. I pumped the sledge around a couple of times and then swung it hard as I could against the glass.”

  “Hit a home run with that swing?” Pearl asked. “Or did you miss, like you do at our softball games?”

  “I went for the fences, Pearl, when I should have been going for a single,” Gio said. “I swung the sledgehammer so hard, it flew from my hand and went right through the glass. I’m watching it fly through the air into the apartment, and where the fuck does it decide to land? Right square in the center of the suspect’s bed. There the guy is, sleeping with legs apart, a sledgehammer two inches from his package. That woke his ass up in a hurry.”

  “That had to fuck him up,” I said.

  “Here’s the best part,” Gio said. “The four feebs are standing around me, stunned. Then one of them says, ‘What did we just do?’ I looked at him and said, ‘We? Where you getting that “we” shit? What, you got a mouse in your pocket? All I see and all everybody popping eyes out of their windows sees is FBI. And that ain’t me, suckers. I ain’t wearing no windbreaker.’ ”

  “And you did help them get the man they came to get,” I said. “They can’t deny that.”

  “And I got to keep the sledgehammer,” Gio said. “All in all, not a bad way to start a new day.”

  18.

  U.S. ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, SOUTHERN DISTRICT, LOWER MANHATTAN