A short silence. Then, “Yes, I was. I can’t apply a double standard to myself. How do I know Carpenter won’t compromise my position on something important down the road?”
“Good,” I replied. He gave me a rather odd look. I quickly went on. “Because that fits in with our plan to get you off the hook.”
“Off the hook?”
“Yeah, Chief, off the hook.” Good. I had his attention.
I continued. “If the information we have wasn’t tainted would it be enough to indict Carpenter? Like if the information got untainted?
Before he could answer, there was a knock on the door and the waiter came in with two bottles of wine. The chief thanked him and said he’d handle the pouring himself.
As he was pouring, he looked at me and with a smile said, “Untainted?? At least he still had a sense of humor. Then, “is there really physical evidence against Carpenter?”
“You bet, tons of it. Some of it’s even in Carpenter’s handwriting.”
“Okay, then the answer’s yes. With those papers they could build a case against him, and probably indict and convict him on a number of charges. However, it’s still problematic and I don’t see how they could be what you call untainted.”
“I know.” I looked him in the eye and asked, “Ifyou had uncovered all this information instead of us, do you think the Bureau would act on it?”
“Without question.”
“Okay, Chief,” I said, “we think we’ve come up with a plan that’ll allow you to present all the information in a way that the Bureau will accept. A way that you can use the evidence without its being tainted. And –and – we think it’s pretty much completely legal.”
The chief cleared his throat, looked down, then, “Pretty much completely legal? What does that mean?”
“It means, as far as you or your department’s concerned, you’ll find all the papers, in his house, on your own, it’s that simple.”
“So somehow, the papers are going to get back into his house, do I read you right?”
“No comment,” I said.
I’m sorry, Casey,” he said, and he really did look sorry. “I don’t think I can do this. I know it’s important to you, and it might be important to me, but I just don’t think I should get involved in whatever your idea is. Let’s forget the whole thing.
Without the chief, nothing would work. Without the chief, we were dead in the water.
Providentially, our meal arrived just then. I desperately needed time to think.
CHAPTER 58
Nothing more was said while we ate. Josie and Gus looked at me and I shrugged my shoulders in desperation. Finally he spoke again.
“For me, it’s my conscience. I’m proud of being a good police chief. I’m proud of my reputation. I’m afraid something’ll go wrong and I’ll end up even worse off than I am now.”
“As long as we’re here, can we at least tell you our plan?” I said, trying not to sound like I was begging. “We think it’s damn near foolproof. See what you think?”
“And it would get all this information into my hands legally?”
“I’m pretty sure.” I said. I was trying to undersell the idea; I didn’t think he’d react well to my being super enthusiastic.
“Josie, ask the chief the same questions you asked Smitty this morning.”
I don’t think Josie was expecting this, but she rose to the challenge.
“Chief, you know my dad’s reputation and history, but would you consider him – for legal purposes – as much a legal citizen as anyone else?”
“Of course.”
“If he – or anyone else – came to you with a legitimate complaint about someone in your city doing something criminal, would you investigate it as a matter of course?”
“Of course.”
“Even if this citizen didn’t live in your city, but the supposed criminal did?”
“Yes.”
“And if you had a complaint from a city department – say a garbage collector – that he’d been threatened with a gun by someone in that house, could you get a search warrant?”
“Uh…yeah. Where are you going with all this?”
“Those were the ‘suppose’ questions I asked Dad this morning. He thought you’d be able to answer them all with yeses, and really, that’s why we’re here.”
I gave Chief O’Meara a moment for thought, gave Josie a nod of thanks, then took over again.
“Okay, Chief, here’s our plan. Smitty will lodge an official complaint with your office about him being blackmailed by Carpenter.”
A long slow nod of acceptance.
“And the local garbage collector will lodge a complaint about being threatened by an occupant of the house. It’ll be an honest complaint because he’ll be the actual relief garbage man for Carpenter’s house, and he actually did have a gun waved in his face by one of the guys in the house.”
Of course we weren’t telling him that the garbage man had been part of the group that broke into the house, and the gun waiving had occurred inside the house, not outside.
“With those two complaints, can you get a warrant to search his house?”
“No problem at all.”
“One more thing. We’ll guarantee that every incriminating piece of paper you need for the FBI will be in the house for you to discover for yourself during the raid. We can’t see how the FBI couldn’t accept that. They’re his papers, in his house. The fact that Carpenter thought they went missing for a few days is inconsequential, right?
“You’re saying that the papers you have will somehow magically reappear in his house, in time for me to ‘discover’ them?”
“The way I see it, we’ll be correcting something. We’ll be undoing a wrong. You might say we’ll be un-stealing. Is there a law against un-stealing?”
For the first time today, the chief laughed. Un-taint and un-steal? I don’t want to know anything about that,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, I never heard anyone say that.”
He went serious again and lapsed into a silence, apparently mulling over all the consequences of our plan. While he was mulling, I took the opportunity to study his face. He looked to be in his late forties or a real young looking fiftyish. Up to this point, I hadn’t thought of him as a person, just a uniform. He didn’t wear a uniform, but you get my drift. I was finally seeing him as a person. He was rather good looking, with an open face and blue, somewhat piercing, eyes and brown hair that was receding and turning grey around the edges of a military cut. A very serious man.
Thinking of him as a husband and father in addition to being police chief, I could appreciate the deep concern he had to feel for his family, let alone his city and his future. A lot hung on the decision he had to make.
I broke his silence. “There’s something else you can use, Chief. Have any of the prisoners we gave you told you anything worthwhile?”
“I’ve been thinking about that too,” he said. “They’ve volunteered several interesting things, and have corroborated a number of the things you told me. If I add that to what I find at his house, it gets even more damning for Carpenter.”
Again, he went silent. We waited.
“I guess I have no choice,” he finally said. “It is an okay plan. It’s certainly the only way I can maybe get out of this mess with some honor for myself and my family.”
I told him we’d have to get back to Smitty and start laying out the plan. We shook hands. He paid the bill and drove us back to the station.
In our car, Josie immediately phoned the house. Nips answered the phone and told her that Smitty was looking at his boat.
“Is he okay?
“No he ain’t. The more he looks at the boat the madder he gets. He’s really pissed, steaming and ready to blow. I hope you guys are coming back with some good news or he’s gonna blow his top. You know your dad. He’s not good at waiting for something to happen. If you can get here pretty quick with something positive to do, maybe that’ll defuse him.”
She got
off the phone and told Gus to get us home as quickly as he could.
Smitty was waiting for us in the garage. Josie grabbed his arm and said, “Come on. Let’s go up to the dining room. We need to bring you up to date on some good news.”
He yanked his arm away from her and said, “Good, I could use some good news.”
The chief agreed on our plan, he’s going to talk to the FBI. We need to work out some details.”
He looked over at me. “What details?”
“We gotta figure out a way to get Carpenters’ papers back into his house so the chief can legally discover them.”
“How the hell do we do that? Where’d that idea come from?” Is that another of your crazy ideas?”
Ignoring him I continued. “And you have to lodge a formal complaint about being blackmailed by Carpenter.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
I went on, “Oh, yeah, the last thing. You have to get Carpenter’s garbage man to swear that he was threatened with a gun at Carpenter’s house.”
“You finished?” he grumbled.
I looked up from my notes just in time to see him wink at Gus. He was having fun at my expense. It looked like he was okay with our list of to-dos.
“I think so. I already told the chief we’d do that. He said if we– you– could do all that, he’d do the rest. I didn’t tell him about your plan to get Carpenter nailed as a sex pervert.”
“And you’re sure that’s all you promised I’d do?”
“Yeah, Dad,” Josie said. “Nothing you can’t do with both hands tied behind your back.”
There was one thing the chief had told us that we weren’t sure we should tell Smitty. Josie and I whispered together and decided it was okay to tell him, seeing how he seemed to be in control of himself. Josie did the telling
The chief said he got some interesting info from one of the jailed guys. There’s a guy working for Carpenter that’s got a rep. as a bomb maker.
Smitty pursed his lips.
“He’s the guy that blew my boat?”
“Probably. The chief said to tell you he’ll get the guy. He should be easy to find. He’s big, about six three, bald and has tats up and down both arms. The kid said the guy usually goes around in tank tops, showing off his art work.”
Smitty took the news calmly. I was pleased that we’d evidently, successfully kept Smitty from erupting. He sat there eying the three of us for a moment.
“You guys think you’re so clever, don’t you,” he finally said. “I know what you’re doing, you know. You’re trying to keep me cool. Well, I’m way ahead of you.” Josie and I exchanged guilty looks.
And Smitty wasn’t finished. He pointed a finger at his daughter. “Josie,you stop trying to manipulate me. You forget your mom manipulated me for years. I sure as hell recognize it when I see it.”
CHAPTER 59
“So what do I have to do?” Smitty asked.
“The chief said he’d need a deposition from you about the blackmail attempt. Said for you to call the station and make arrangement to meet with an officer”
As usual, Smitty delegated to me. “You call and arrange the meeting and see if the officer’ll come over here for the damned thing. And while you’re at it,” he added, “since you get along with him so well, tell him I’m making you my liaison with him. You stay over there in El Cerrito with him and keep me posted on his progress. And have Josie and Gus go along. You can report to me here each night.”
And then, totally unexpected, “By the way, you’re not doing a bad job for us, so I’m putting you on salary. How does a hundred a week sound?”
How did it sound? It sounded great! I was practically broke. He handed me five twenties and I went to a phone and called the chief. He said he’d handle Smitty and would very much like Gus, Josie and me as liaison. “So you’ll be out here all day? Would you three like to come to my house for dinner?”
I didn’t even ask Josie or Gus, just said we’d be delighted. When I told them what Smitty had requested, that we stay over in El Cerrito, Josie was a little apprehensive. She wanted to know what her dad was planning, and why he wanted her out of the way.
First chance she got, she asked Smitty the same thing. He swore he was planning nothing.
“Just doing what the chief suggested.”
“Thanks to you three, I’ll be spending most of today trying to figure out a way to get this stuff back into Carpenter’s house. Any idea how fast the chief can organize the raid on his place?”
Chief O’Meara hadn’t mentioned a time table. I’d gotten the impression he was waiting for Smitty to deal with getting both his and the garbage company’s depositions on file. He certainly wasn’t going to move until he knew the evidence was back at Carpenter’s.
When the three of us got to the police station, we were told that the chief had left a message, that we were to make ourselves comfortable in his office and he’d be right back.
A few minutes later, he swept in, took his chair behind his desk and invited us to sit. He wasted no time getting right to the topic.
“The reason I invited you to the house for dinner,” he said, “is that I wanted you to see how important my family is to me. Also I thought it would be a good idea to get to know you a little better. For example, I know Josie is Smitty’s daughter, and I know Gus has been with Smitty for umpteen years, but – how’d you get mixed up in all this?”
Obviously he was talking to me. So I proceeded to tell him the whole story, only slightly abridged to protect the guilty.
“I wonder if Smitty knows how lucky he is to have you around. Seems to me that a lot of the ideas we’re using came from you,” the chief observed, inflating my ego.
“On the other hand, if he wasn’t around, we wouldn’t have been in this mess in the first place,” Gus said, deflating it back to normal.
“Thanks. I needed that,” I said to Gus, then turned to the chief.
“What makes a guy like Carpenter tick? Is it just money?
“Probably. Although in Carpenters’ case, I have another theory. I don’t think that Carpenter operates in a vacuum,” the chief went on. “Ever wondered where all his information comes from? I think someone’s pullinghis strings. From what you told me, it sounds like most of the blackmail stuff originated in Sacramento. I’d be willing to bet there’s someone over Carpenter, someone in Sacramento. The guy who made Carpenter what he is today.That guy’s the real murderer.”
“Why do you think that Chief?” I asked.
“To me, it’s pretty obvious. Carpenter’s pretty wealthy, from what we know. There’s really no reason for him to go off the deep end like he’s done – unless someone’s ordered him to. Someone in the state capitol’s worried stiff about all these missing papers. Someone who’s making Carpenter do things he’d normally not do.”
“Yeah,” I added. “And not do them very well.” The chief nodded.
“You’re a quick study, my friend. You know what I think? I think you guys are going to end up in Sacramento, and you’re going end going up against a lawmaker of some sort. I can see it now: Senator So-and-So indicted on charges of something or other... I’ll tell you one thing; if a senator’s involved you won’t have to worry about getting the FBI involved. They’ll be falling all over you.”
I liked the sound of that.
Just then the desk sergeant stuck his head in and told the chief they had a situation that needed him. The chief in turn asked us if we wanted to wait there or go out for coffee or something. We elected to stay put.
“Do you guys think we’ll end up in Sacramento?” Josie asked after the chief left the room.
Gus said, “I don’t know but Smitty seems to think we will.”
A few minutes later, after some silence, Gus added, “I’ve been mulling over an idea about getting Carpenters papers back in his house. We gotta get him out of the house long enough to sneak the papers in, right?”
“That’s the idea.”
“You know how C
arpenter still hasn’t found his precious diary? Suppose it turned up somehow. Suppose someone got in touch with him and told him he’d found it. D’ya think he’d go after it? ’Specially if the guy wanted a reward for his trouble?”
“Like a shot!” I responded. “But what good would that do?”
“It might get Carpenter out of his house long enough for Smitty to get the papers back in and I think I got a way to do it. This friend of mine runs an antique warehouse in Alameda; he’d do it for me.”
“Do what?”
“Call Carpenter and convince he had found the little black book and he wants a reward for returning it. But he can’t get away from work and Carpenter will have to come to Alameda to get it. It would take most of an hour and a half to go from Carpenters house to Alameda and back. Plenty of time.
“Might work. You want to call your friend and see if he’s willing?
Gus’s conversation with his friend was short. The guy said he’d not only willing to do it, but it’d be a blast and he had some ideas of his own.
“D’ya think if we hid the stuff in his basement, he wouldn’t notice it before the chief raids the place?” Gus asked.
“Probably as good a place as any,” I told him.
Josie suggested that Gus phone her dad and tell him what he’d told us about Alameda.
I added, “The more I think about it, the more I like it. Tell Smitty we can make it work. And we don’t say anything to the chief about it, right?” They both agreed.
Gus made the call and added his own take.
“As soon as the papers are in place, we let the chief know and he raids the place.”
CHAPTER 60
At the Chief’s house we meet his wife, kids and dogs, not necessarily in that order. At the front door the dogs were all over us. Once we shooed them off we met the kids. An all American family. His wife was sweet and cute, obviously accustomed to having guests for dinner at a short notice. The three kids, all under nine, were tickled to have us, especially having heard about the Devils. The chief must have given them a sanitized description of the gang’s reputation. Of course, I’m not really a member and neither is Josie, and Gus is the most gentlemanly member I’ve met so far, so he probably thinks his kids are safe.
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