Stakeout (2013)
Page 22
“I’m with Major Crimes. We have a wide latitude.”
“Uh huh. And while you were questioning her, did you plant the gun used to kill her boyfriend in her apartment?’
Sergeant Fuller’s mouth fell open. “I most certainly did not.”
“Really? Didn’t you and Tony Gallo decide she was becoming a liability, just like Vinnie Carbone had become a liability, so you framed her with the gun? She knows you did. At least, if she thinks about it. She didn’t find the gun until after you were there. She didn’t think anything about it, because it was Vinnie’s gun; she figured he just left it there. But now that it’s been identified as the murder weapon, she knows he didn’t leave it there, and she didn’t kill him, so the only way it could have got there—”
Jersey Girl sprang up, boobs a-bobbing. “That’s exactly what you did!” she screamed, and launched herself across the courtroom.
Mrs. Tony Gallo met her halfway, and the two women fell to the floor, punching, kicking, and gouging at each other as the courtroom went wild.
64
IT WAS EASY AFTER THAT.
Since I was the only one who had the faintest idea what happened, Richard was able to negotiate immunity for me and MacAullif from anything short of murder, in exchange for my story. This was only slightly unnerving, since I was making it up as I went along, and with murder still on the table, it wasn’t as if the prosecution didn’t have recourse.
The epiphany for me was the realization that the widow Marston was having an affair with Sergeant Fuller, not Tony Gallo. Once I realized that, everything fell into place. I hound the widow, and she goes right to the police station. Not to report me—she’s having an affair with a cop.
And how did Tony Gallo disappear from a motel room surrounded by police? He was never there. The widow was there with Sergeant Fuller. He was there when she got there. His car was parked inconspicuously at the far end the lot. I wrote down the license number. When MacAullif called the cops to sell them on the idea that Tony Gallo killed a Manhattan businessman and was having a tryst with the widow in a New Jersey motel, Morgan got wind of it. He hightailed it to the motel, banged on the door, pushed his way in, and told Sergeant Fuller to get dressed and get a pair of handcuffs on the widow so when the cops showed up they could lead her out. That’s why I never saw Sergeant Fuller arrive. I thought I just missed him. But he was already there. He was there and Tony Gallo wasn’t, and that’s where I made my mistake.
Not that Tony Gallo was innocent. Tony Gallo was in it up to his eyebrows. Which answered another question. Why does a mob boss from the Jersey Shore drive all the way to Ft. Lee to have his meetings? Because he’s in bed with the local cops. Because there’s a Don’t Ask Don’t Tell motel with a connecting door where he can meet anyone he wants without having to be seen entering the room. In the course of the last few years, he had used it many times.
Alice put her finger on it, not surprisingly, with the question I couldn’t answer, “Why did the widow hire you?” That was the key to the whole thing. The widow hired me because she was setting up her husband to be murdered. She wanted a credulous PI to follow her husband to a motel, stake it out, and be prepared to testify that no one, least of all her, went near the place when the guy was killed. Which would have worked perfectly if Tony Gallo’s name hadn’t come into it.
I followed Marston to the motel, hoping to get a picture of the bimbo he was cheating on his wife with. Only there was no such woman. Marston was mixed up with Tony Gallo, and he went to the motel to meet him. Tony’s in the other room, just as he is for business meetings, only this time he comes through the connecting door and shoots Philip Marston dead. This is partly as a favor for Sergeant Fuller, who’s got the hots for the widow, and partly because Philip Marston has proven deficient as a business partner, and Tony Gallo does not take kindly to reversals of fortune. Tony kills him, wipes the gun clean, leaves it under the bed, goes back to his unit and checks out. I actually saw him leave, but I never would have connected it if I hadn’t seen him in another context.
Meanwhile, Bad Cop and Morgan are hanging out in the police station, waiting for the 911 call reporting the crime. It comes in, not from the motel manager, but from Tony Gallo himself, phoning in an anonymous tip. They saddle up and ride out, just in time to catch me in the act.
The motel manager was innocent, by the way. At least the way he tells it, and frankly I don’t think he was bright enough to make it up. But according to him, he didn’t call Tony Gallo and tip him off that MacAullif was nosing around the motel register. His story, which was too absurd not to be true, was that after MacAullif left, he called the police station to report that the dumb cop they sent to get a credit card receipt from the crime scene made a mistake and got one from the room next door.
Which was a red flag for Bad Cop and Morgan. They immediately checked, saw that Vinnie Carbone had signed the receipt in question in his own name. Which made him a huge liability. Vinnie Carbone was just a driver, he had no idea why he’d rented the room, he did it all the time. He wasn’t even aware of the murder, but if questioned he would spill the beans.
So Vinnie Carbone had to go. Bad Cop called on him at home, ascertained that he was indeed as stupid and dangerous as they thought. So Fuller feeds him some bullshit story along the lines of if he’s going to be driving Tony at night, he’s gotta have a gun. Vinnie shows it to him, and Fuller picks it up and shoots him dead.
Fuller hangs onto the gun till he can plant it where it will do the most good. I probably would have been first choice, except he is not eager to connect the two murders together.
When Fuller tells Tony Gallo what happened, Tony has an idea. He’s been having a fling with Vinnie’s girlfriend, Angela Russo, and lately she’s been making a pest of herself in a way that’s roused the suspicions of his wife. So Tony figures to kill two birds with one stone. As soon as the body’s found and the investigation begins, Fuller calls on Jersey Girl, questions her about her boyfriend, and manages to plant the gun in her apartment. Where it undoubtedly would have been found by the police after sufficient time had elapsed so she wouldn’t connect the gun to his visit.
Then I step in, impersonate a police officer—for which I have immunity, thank you very much—appropriate the gun, get it tested, and proceed to have a nervous breakdown.
Jersey Girl had no inkling the gun was the one that killed her boyfriend. Or that Bad Cop was the one that pulled the trigger. But once Richard confronted him in court, she realized what he’d done. He’d been in her apartment and he’d planted the gun. Vinnie’s gun. He’d taken it, and he’d killed Vinnie with it, and he’d planted it on her. That realization transformed her into a vengeful tigress. I think she would have torn his eyes out right on the witness stand if Mrs. Gallo hadn’t intervened.
And Bad Cop really was a bad cop. I suppose that shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did. But sometimes the simple explanation turns out to be true. Even if it happens to be mine.
So things worked out. Bad Cop and Tony Gallo got indicted for the two murders—in each instance, one as the primary and the other as an accessory before and after the fact. Their lawyers should make a hell of a lot of money, and probably won’t do them any good. The widow Marston lucked out, if one can call it that, and only got indicted for the murder of her husband. And much as I hate to kick a widow when she’s down, Richard volunteered to sue her for my fee.
As for Jersey Girl, I guess she went back to teasing hair and tantalizing men. She hadn’t done anything wrong, unless you count boffing a mobster or lying to a police officer, of which she was actually innocent, since the supposed police officer was me. And her only real lie was that her boyfriend had given her the gun. She found it in her apartment and assumed she had just overlooked it, though she was sure she hadn’t. Which is probably why she accused me of planting it. It had to be in the back of her mind. She actually had the right explanation, she just had the wrong perpetrator. When she saw I wasn’t going for it, she li
ed and said Vinnie gave her the gun. Which would have meant she was guilty of murder, if I believed it. Lucky for her, I didn’t.
As for the good guys, I got off the hook for murder, MacAullif got off the hook for filing a false police report, impersonating an officer, and choosing his friends unwisely, and Richard got his twenty-five grand back. Kind of a win-win all around.
Once things got straightened out, I called Mike Sallingsworth in Atlantic City to tell the ex-PI he was off the hook. Turned out he didn’t need to be told.
“So, Tony Gallo went down,” Mike said.
“How you’d hear that?”
“I keep track of people who could hurt me. His name’s high on the list.”
“I didn’t lead him to you.”
“Doesn’t matter. You came around asking questions. Tony Gallo was the answer. I didn’t give it to you, but that would be small consolation if he got it in his head I did.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it. Trust me, Tony Gallo’s going to be doing serious time.”
“Maybe so, but guys like that got a long reach. You might want to have someone start your car for you for a while.”
I shuddered. “Thanks. That hadn’t occurred to me. Now it will be all I think about.”
“You’re really not cut out for this business, are you?” Sallingsworth said. “You ever think about retiring?”
“I need the money.”
“Don’t we all.”
Later that night I told Alice what Mike said. About retiring, not about starting my car.
She didn’t say I couldn’t, or that we needed the money, or what else could I do, or anything of the kind. All she said was, “You’re not that old.”
I found that disturbing on so many levels.
Anyway, I’m not about to retire.
But after careful consideration, I’ve come to the conclusion that stakeouts are possibly a little beyond my area of expertise.
I should probably try to stick to trip-and-falls.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Parnell Hall
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