She’s probably in her mid-sixties, short and a bit overweight, pleasant looking and with an apparently perpetual half smile that never quite manages to break into a wide grin. I would bet my salary that she bakes and brings the fruits of her labors into the office to share with her coworkers.
Gail and those coworkers spend their days at Bergen Hospital. Gail works in administration; her title is Director. The reason I’m here to speak with her is because she moved into Rita Carlisle’s job when Rita disappeared three years ago.
We’re in her office, and I start by apologizing for taking up her time.
“Oh, don’t worry. There’s never enough time anyway, so this won’t change anything.”
“I understand you took over for Rita Carlisle three years ago?”
She nods, sadly but still maintaining that small smile. It’s possible that it doesn’t reflect happiness or pleasure; it might even have been surgically implanted into her face. “Yes, it’s a promotion I wish I had never gotten.”
It’s interesting and pleasing that she does not ask me questions about my questions. Everyone else so far has wanted to understand what I’m doing, and whether the Rita Carlisle case is being reopened. Not Gail; she is here to please and mind her own business.
“Did you work for Ms. Carlisle?”
She shakes her head. “No. I was here at the hospital, but in a different area. I was a nursing supervisor.”
“Is that your background? Nursing?”
“Yes.” She sighs. “Sometimes I miss it terribly.”
“So why were you chosen for this new job?”
“I guess because I had been here so long, and I was so familiar with everything.” She allows herself a small laugh. “And maybe people weren’t thinking clearly.”
“Did you know Ms. Carlisle?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve been here close to forty years, so people always come to me to understand how things are done. I didn’t know Rita that well, but I considered her a friend. We had lunch quite a few times, and she was part of the group that always buys lottery tickets together. So far no luck.”
“When you took over, was there anything about the job that surprised or troubled you? Anything you didn’t expect?”
“There was plenty I didn’t expect; it took me longer than I care to admit to get up to speed. But nothing troubling; it was mostly due to my unfamiliarity with all of it.”
“Were you aware of any difficulties that Rita was having?”
“In her job?”
I shrug. “It’s an open-ended question. Fill in whatever answer you can.”
She thinks for a few moments, considering the question. “No. I mean, she wanted to make more money, and was unhappy with the way raises and promotions were given out, buy hey, join the club, you know?”
I’m getting nowhere fast with this; it’s like asking Wally and the Beaver to talk about the dysfunctional aspects of the Cleaver family.
“Were you aware of her having any personal difficulties with anyone that she worked with?”
“I don’t know of any, no. Rita was a very upbeat person. I mean, I know she wasn’t crazy about the travel; she was a homebody like me.”
“The job entails a considerable amount of travel?” I ask.
“Not so much; I mean, it’s not what a jet-setter would go through, you know? But I like to be at home, and see my grandkids.”
She points to a picture of the two kids on her desk; there are two more on the walls. I acknowledge their cuteness and ask what the traveling entails.
“Well, mostly conventions, conferences. Occasionally the hospital staff goes on what they call off-sites, but there’s less of that these days. Money is pretty tight, apparently. I do it because it’s part of the job, but I’m getting a bit old to run around the country.”
“Must be tiring,” I say.
“Yes.” She leans in, as if sharing a secret. “Don’t tell anyone, but my trip next week is the one I dread the most. It’s so far. But it’s our most important conference, so I have to go every year. I wish I didn’t.”
“Where are you going?”
“Las Vegas.”
It’s possible that the Rita Carlisle connection to Vegas has just been made.
Could it be that easy?
“Do you know if Rita also went to conferences in Las Vegas?” I ask, trying not to cringe as I wait for the answer.
“Oh, yes,” Gail says. “Absolutely. Rita used to look forward to it. We talked about it a lot.”
“What were those conversations like?”
She laughs. “I would tell her I had no interest in ever going there, and she’d say I was crazy. She said that even for people that didn’t gamble, Vegas had the best hotels, and restaurants, and shows, and swimming pools. She said I’d love it if I’d give it a chance. Now I go, but believe me, I don’t love it.”
“Is the conference held the same time every year?”
She nods. “I think so. It had just been held a few weeks before I got this job, so it was almost a full year until I went. It made me sad to think about Rita.”
“And it’s always in Las Vegas?”
“That I know for sure, because Harriman Hospital in Vegas is the hospital that hosts it.”
I ask Gail to check when the conference was three years ago, and she tells me a date that was indeed just three weeks before Rita’s disappearance. I thank her, wish her a good trip, and tell her that my partner Nate recommends Cirque du Soleil. I don’t mention anything about the elastic women.
Nate is in with Captain Bradley when I get back to the precinct, so I make that my first stop. “Where do we stand with the warrant?” I ask.
“Judge Kaplan just got back in town today. We’ll have it in front of him by the end of the day,” Bradley says. “He might not sign it until the morning, but it’s looking good.”
Judge Kaplan is considered the “easiest” judge to get to grant warrants, so whenever we have one that we’re not positive will be approved, we “judge-shop” and get it to him. “Can you have someone call us to let us know? Nate and I will be in Vegas,” I say.
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s been confirmed that Rita Carlisle was in Vegas for a conference three weeks before she disappeared.”
“So?”
“So there’s been a Vegas connection all along with Tartaro that we haven’t been able to figure out,” I say. “Maybe something happened to her on that trip to trigger all of this.”
“So you’re going to walk around asking people if they remember seeing Rita Carlisle at a conference three years ago?”
“When we’re not at the spa and blackjack tables.”
“I call the window seat,” Nate says. “Is it too late to order a special meal for the flight?”
“You’re not both going,” Bradley says, and then points to Nate. “More specifically, you’re not going.”
“Why not? And if you have to pick one of us, why would you choose Amnesia Boy?”
“First of all, I don’t trust you; I don’t think you’ll ever leave the buffet. Second, it’s not a two-person job; it’s probably not even a one-person job. Third, Doug has done most of the interviews so far, and I want you here to follow through on this warrant. And fourth, and most important, I don’t trust you; I don’t think you’ll ever leave the buffet.”
I turn to Nate. “I don’t want to start any trouble, but I don’t think he fully trusts you. It might have to do with the buffet.”
“This is bullshit. You’d better not go to Cirque du Soleil.”
“I promise.”
The truth is that I share Bradley’s view that it’s probably a waste of time, but it feels like a box we have to check. Even though Rita Carlisle’s trip to Vegas could well have been a coincidence, especially since she went every year, there’s always the possibility that it was a catalyst for what was to follow.
I leave Bradley’s office and stop at what passes for our travel department, which is manned by Se
rgeant Willy Sano. Willy lost part of his right foot two years ago; he was giving out a ticket on a highway, and an oncoming car swerved at him. Most of him got out of the way, but his right foot didn’t quite make it.
So Willy has been on desk duty ever since, and among his responsibilities is travel. We don’t do much of it, so it’s not exactly a time-consuming job for him.
“Where do you want to stay?” he asks.
“You tell me. You’re the travel agent.”
“I’m a cop, wiseass. How about if I just find a place listed under ‘shitholes’?”
I’m forced to spend a few minutes kissing Willy’s ass before he gets me into the nicest hotel on the department-approved list. It’s the Paris, and Willy tells me they named it that because it looks like Paris.
Makes sense.
Next stop is Jessie’s office to tell her what’s going on, and her first reaction is, “Nate must be pissed.”
I nod. “Yes, he must.”
“Will you stay at my place tonight so I can give you your good-bye present?”
“The word that comes to mind is ‘absolutely.’”
My next pre-trip move is to call Lieutenant Zack Roberts of Vegas PD, who I had spoken to for background information on Shawn and Tartaro. “I’m coming out there tomorrow,” I say.
“Uh-oh. I lied about getting you comped at the Excalibur.”
“That’s okay. I’m at the Paris.”
“You Jersey cops must be hot shit.”
He offers me any help I need, and I say, “I’m going to want to talk to possible witnesses. Can you spare someone to give me cover?” As a Jersey cop I have no jurisdiction out there, and people might not see the need to talk with me. If I have a Vegas cop along, that would change.
“Witnesses to what?”
“Events,” I say.
“You sure you want to be that specific?”
“Sorry. Maybe I’ll be able to tell you more as I get out there and this unfolds.”
“I’ll see if anyone is free,” he says. “But we’re pretty busy. I’m booked solid.”
“One of the people I’d like to talk to is Salvatore Tartaro.”
“Then it’s you and me, buddy.”
“I thought you’re booked solid.”
“For Tartaro, I’ll juggle my schedule. I like to talk to him; he’s a hell of a conversationalist.”
I tell Roberts that I’ll call him when I arrive. Having him with me will make things infinitely easier. For now I head back to my office to do some research and make some more phone calls; I need to get the lay of the land and figure out who I want to talk to out there.
I’m sure I’ll spend most of the flight tomorrow thinking about the parts of this case that bother and confuse me. In fact, the flight won’t be long enough for that; that’s how long the list is.
Moving up toward the top of that list is something I haven’t spent much time pondering. That is the fact that the victims were decapitated, whether pre- or postmortem. Until now I’ve thought that it was done to send a message, first from Silva to Tartaro with Shawn’s death, and then a return volley from Tartaro with the Tony Silva hit.
But now that I’ve thought more about it, that explanation doesn’t hold up. I would imagine that both Silva and Tartaro have committed or ordered their share of murders in their long and glorious careers. Yet if they’ve ever separated the head from the body of one of their victims, I am not aware of it.
The “message” part is where the idea gets even shakier. They might do something like that for shock effect, and to scare the planned recipient of that message. But Silva and Tartaro are the last people on earth who would be shocked or frightened by violence, and they would both know that about each other.
Why send a message if you know the only person it won’t impact is the one you’re sending it to?
The news of Tony Silva’s death hit Salvatore Tartaro hard.
Not nearly as hard as it hit Joey Silva, and obviously not as hard as it hit Tony himself. But Tartaro was affected for altogether different reasons, all having to do with his own self-interest.
He had met Tony on two occasions but really didn’t know him, and certainly didn’t care about him one way or the other. But Tartaro was smart enough to know that the hit on Tony, coming on the heels of the hit on Shawn, would look to Silva as if Tartaro was exacting revenge.
Which, of course, he wasn’t.
There were two other problems with the situation, and they were connected to each other. Hovering over everything was the business relationship that Tartaro had with Silva, which had become increasingly lucrative over time, and which was going strong.
Rather than diminishing when Bennett died, as Tartaro suspected it might, Joey Silva had actually expanded the business relationship. So this issue with Tony could threaten that.
The other factor was that Tartaro, like everyone else, considered Tony to be the smarter of the two Silvas, though that might have been faint praise. But it was obvious that Tony was a calming influence on his brother, suppressing Joey’s more volatile impulses. It was unlikely that anyone had enough credibility in Joey’s eyes, or had enough of Joey’s trust, to move into that role.
So Tartaro did what he always did in situations like this; he talked it out with Dominic Romano. He respected and trusted Dominic, who was to Tartaro almost what Tony Silva had been to brother Joey.
“Silva is going to think we hit Tony,” Tartaro said. “Revenge for Shawn. That’s what I would think if I were him.”
“Even if he does, there’s nothing he can do. And he wouldn’t want to try anything now anyway. He’s a businessman, and we’ve got more business coming up.”
“I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder all the time,” Tartaro said. “Maybe I should talk to him directly.”
“Won’t do any good,” Dominic said. “He wouldn’t believe you anyway, and it would show weakness. Joey eats weakness with a spoon.”
“We shouldn’t have gone in with him in the first place,” Tartaro said. “We could have done this on our own.”
“It was good business, and it still is. And you didn’t go in with him, you went in with Bennett.”
Tartaro nodded. “But Bennett wasn’t out of his goddamn mind; he understood how normal human beings behave. I didn’t trust Bennett, but I could still talk to him, reason with him.”
Dominic shook his head and said, “I understand that, but we’re doing better business with Silva than we ever did with Bennett. He’s not as cautious.”
Tartaro thought about it for a few moments, and then said, “Set up a call.”
“With Silva?”
“No, with JFK. Who the hell do you think?”
So Dominic started the process of arranging a call from Tartaro to Joey Silva. It was not a simple “pick up the phone” situation; no one involved had any doubt that every call they made on their normal telephones was listened to by some law enforcement agency somewhere.
But it was finally arranged on secure, throwaway phones, and Tartaro made the call. Tartaro set the dial to SPEAKERPHONE so Dominic could hear what was being said. In New Jersey, Silva did the same, so Philly could listen in.
Once the fake pleasantries were exchanged, Tartaro said, “Joey, I’m real sorry about Tony.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
“Terrible thing. I’ve got a brother, so I know what it’s like.” Tartaro didn’t mention that his own brother was a philosophy professor at Cal State Fullerton, and that he hadn’t spoken to him in six years.
“Yeah?” Joey asked. “You know what it’s like? Did they find your brother’s head sitting on a garbage Dumpster in an alley?”
“Okay, Joey, I just want to make one thing clear. I had nothing to do with Tony. I liked the guy, and you’re my partner. I thought because of Shawn you might have other ideas, so I wanted to talk to you, direct, so that we understand each other.”
The truth is that Joey did not think Tartaro was behind it, but he didn’t want t
o give him that, at least not at this point. “I’ll find out who it was.”
“Good. And you let me know how I can help. My people are your people.”
“I don’t need no help. But the guy who did it, he’s going to need plenty of help.”
“I hear you, Joey. Just don’t let this get in the way of business. Not now. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah. I know what you mean.”
The call ends, and Tartaro turned to Dominic. “What do you think?”
Dominic shook his head. “The son of a bitch thinks we hit Tony.”
In New Jersey, Philly said to Joey, “The son of a bitch hit Tony.”
This is the first plane I’ve been on in ten years.
Not literally; I have photographs of Jessie and me in the Caribbean a few years ago, and I don’t think we drove there. But I don’t remember any of the flights I might have taken, which I have come to realize is the same as not taking them.
The experience is a lot different than I remember from long ago. Everything is more crowded; the check-in areas, security, and the plane itself. The crowds are all anyone talks about.
Every announcement they make relates to it. There are too many passengers, so they’ll give you a voucher not to fly. And there are too many bags, so there won’t be room for the carry-ons. And clear the boarding area; there are too many people to all get on at once, so your group number means everything.
It’s not until I board that I find out there are no meals on the flight, just these snack boxes to buy. And there used to be telephones on the wall, but they’re gone, too. And I don’t see any movie screens, but they tell me I can watch stuff on my iPad. Which would be good, if I knew how to work an iPad, and if I had an iPad.
But they do have wireless, which is pretty amazing. And it comes in handy, because when we’re over Ohio I come up with one of those ideas that I should have thought of earlier. Rather than wait to land, I can send an email to Nate and Jessie on my phone. What a world.
If Galvis’s revelations are enough to get us a search warrant to look into the hospital and drug companies’ records, then they should also be enough to examine Lewinsky personally. After all, Galvis claimed the frauds and thefts were being done under Lewinsky’s direction.
Fade to Black Page 11
