She got up and stared at herself in the mirror. She looked as washed out as an overexposed print. When the adrenaline wore off and the rage subsided, you were left with depression. She remembered reading Dante’s Inferno in school. Significant that the center of Hell was portrayed not as everlasting fire, but as a frozen wasteland, the absence of all warmth and love.
She found, when she looked outside, the world was like a negative of itself, with a total reversal of figure and ground. The uniform, off-white sky was a pale suggestion of its usual depth. Snow brought out every branch and tree trunk. Objects and buildings that formerly were white revealed themselves in hues of pink and blue and amber. The trees looked taller and, where there were no trees, the land was wider and more forbidding. She couldn’t tell if this wasn’t just guilty awareness of her vanished innocence.
And then the sun came out.
Carver was still asleep. Joanne decided not to wake him, but she wanted to be sure they didn’t miss the garbage pick up.
The door opened just as she was putting on her coat, and Paul walked in. She looked at him apprehensively, seeing him for the first time as a felon would.
He didn’t seem to notice any change in her, though he seemed excited. “You’re all right!”
It was not what she’d expected, and her surprise was genuine. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Dossi was killed last night. Somebody shot him.”
The news—though it was hardly that—caused her to gasp inwardly and freeze outwardly. Confirmation of her worst fear. And fondest hope. “Thank God!” The words burst out before she even thought. His astonishment made her add, simply, matter-of-factly, “I’m free.”
“Ah. Yes.”
She felt an irrational annoyance at the disappointment his tone implied. Perhaps her candor had knocked her from whatever pedestal he’d had her on. But even to herself, she sounded defensive as she said, “I’d be a damn liar if I said I was sorry.”
“Yeah.”
He seemed to finally notice that she was wearing her coat. “You weren’t planning to go out?”
“I didn’t think it would hurt anything if I just put out the garbage. Today’s pickup day and besides this, there’s tons of stuff Carver put in the garage. And I haven’t been out of this house since we got here.”
He looked angry. “Where is Carver?”
“Still sleeping, I guess. I didn’t see any reason to wake him.”
“What did you and he do last night?”
“I turned in early. I have no idea what he did.”
“The noise didn’t wake you when they shoveled the drive?”
“Neither time.”
“They shoveled it twice?” She nodded. “How do you know they did it twice?”
“When you called the second time, I got up to use the bathroom.” And looked out, she thought, to see if John was back yet. “The drive had been shoveled. I remember thinking it was silly because it would have to be done again when it stopped snowing.”
She looked pointedly at her watch. “If we don’t get this out, we’ll miss the garbage man.” She tugged at the trash bag.
He took it from her, and lifted it with surprise. “What’ve you got in here?”
She felt a flush of panic. Her mind stumbled for an answer, for a stall. “He’ll be here any minute!”
“OK. OK.” He picked up the garbage bag and opened the door. “You throwing out an anvil?”
“It’s just some old canned stuff I found in the back of a cabinet. The cans were bulging. They didn’t look safe…”
She could hear the garbage truck backing down the drive. She looked out and saw the driver get out, looking for the garbage can still inside the garage. He shrugged and climbed back in his truck.
Paul ran out the door. “Driver, wait!”
Her heart stopped as the truck jerked forward, restarted as it screeched to a stop.
Paul half-trotted towards the truck and made a free throw at the back of it. The bag hit the edge of the hopper and teetered like a rim shot for a heart-stopping instant, then disappeared.
Paul stepped to the driver’s side of the truck to yell, “We got more. Can you wait a sec?” He hurried toward the garage, digging in his pocket.
The truck driver jumped out, looking annoyed, but helped Paul drag the garbage bags to the truck and throw them in.
Then Paul told the man, “Thanks,” and he took off with a clash of gears.
Joanne’s relief made her feel light-headed.
When Paul came back in the house, he said, “The marshals have orders to stay a few more days—just to be sure Dossi didn’t take out a contract on you before he bought it. Then you’ll be on your own.”
Forty-One
There was yellow police line tape across Dossi’s drive when Minorini and Haskel drove up. Minorini showed his ID to the young cop on duty, and they waited while he conferred with a superior over the radio. Finally he told them, “You can go in. Detective Anslie will be here any minute.” The cop stayed where he was.
The crime scene technicians had finished with the house; it had that tossed and abandoned look—everything out of place, everything smudged with black fingerprint powder.
It didn’t take them long to find the room where Dossi bought it. The only one without an oriental rug, it had a dried blood smear in the center of the floor. Two windows were missing on the north side. The room was freezing. They walked over and looked out one of the empty sockets at a snow field crisscrossed with tracks. Probably a team with a metal detector and a dog had searched it for shell casings or anything else the shooter might have left.
“Pretty decent shooting,” Haskel said.
“Piece of cake for a sniper.”
“Yeah. Well, don’t forget it was dark out and snowing like a son of a bitch.”
About a hundred yards from the window was a small clump of bushes festooned with yellow crime scene tape. The shooter’s stand.
“You figure he was standing or kneeling?” Minorini asked.
“Dossi was close to six feet. And judging by where he landed…” Haskel pointed to the blood smear. “He must have been standing a foot or so from the window. A through-and-through.” He pointed to a foot square hole in the back wall of the room where the evidence team had removed the wall board. “According to the report, the slug came halfway through the drywall in the next room. I’d say our shooter was either kneeling or prone.”
Minorini nodded, then pointed beyond the shooter’s stand, to another part of the yard also cordoned off with tape. “What’s that?”
It looked like a small detention pond with surrounding pines.
Detective Anslie’s voice answered him from the doorway. “That’s where the shooter got in.”
The Highland Park police station was on the ground floor of an ugly, flat-roofed building, a two-story brown brick core flanked by single-story wings. There were a lot of windows, but the view didn’t seem like much from either side of the glass—the Solo Cup factory and a small forest of bare trees outside, Spartan offices within.
They had Dossi’s housekeeper in the break room with a policewoman. The cop was reading a paperback novel, the witness pacing. The young Hispanic’s eyes were red-rimmed. Her clothes looked slept in.
Minorini asked her to sit down at the table, and she did, anxiously. He asked her for her name and repeated the question, “¿Cómo te llamas?” when she didn’t answer right away.
“Manuela Gutierez,” she told him.
“¿De dónde eres?”
“De Honduras.”
“Go on, Manuela. What happened? ¿Qué pasó?”
In Spanglish—and with many gestures—she told him.
She had been sent to bed early. Senor Dossi had a visitor Manuela had not seen, a woman perhaps. Not his wife. He had let the visitor in himself.
Manuela was nearly asleep when she heard a loud noise—like a firecracker—and Carlo, Señor Dossi’s chauffeur, had come to her door demanding to know w
hat had happened.
“Pero yo no sabía.”
She followed after Carlo when he raced to the parlor where Señor Dossi had been entertaining his guest. The visitor was gone. Señor Dossi was lying on the carpet. Señor Dossi was dead. Carlo said so. Manuela thought the visitor had killed him, but Carlo pointed to the window and said something—a word Manuela didn’t know—had shot Señor Dossi through the window. She saw that there was a small hole in the glass. Then Carlo pulled a gun out of his jacket and turned off the room light. He went to another window and broke it out and began shooting. She couldn’t see at what.
“What did you do?” Minorini asked. He noticed that the policewoman had put down her book.
“Nothing, señor. I was too afraid. I did not know what to do. Then I heard pounding on the door and the police came.”
Minorini glanced at the policewoman who seemed to have no response to that.
The police had made Manuela lie down on the floor while they searched the house. Then one of them—a woman—searched her, and they made her sit in the living room for a very long time. Later, the policewoman took her into her room and ordered her to get dressed and they brought her here. They offered her food and water, and access to the toilet, but they would not let her leave, or make a phone call, or know what was going on. They would not even tell her what happened to Señor Dossi. And different people kept coming in to ask her questions.
What had she done?
“Nothing,” Minorini told her. “You did nothing. But the police need your help to catch whoever killed your boss.”
Manuela nodded. “Por supuesto. ¿Cómo puedo ayudarle?”
Minorini had her start with how she got the job…
Carlo hadn’t seen the visitor’s face, but did notice he had badly shaking hands. He didn’t see the license plate but got a fair look at the car. On the advice of a court-appointed attorney, Carlo was quite willing to cooperate. They would not be charging him with any weapons violations, in return for which, he would tell them what he knew.
Minorini had him start at the beginning.
“How long did you work for Mr. Dossi? And who might want to see him dead?”
Forty-Two
The safe house was in Wisconsin. Minorini didn’t bother going to see the scene because Butler—mindful of the flap surrounding Waco—had let the Wisconsin State Police handle the investigation. Butler was having them fax their reports, so Minorini was able to get the official version before he queried Haskel and Reilly about it.
Basically, while waiting for someone to spring the trap set for Lessing’s would-be killer, the decoy team—US Marshal Reilly and Special Agent Haskel—had observed a vehicle approach their location, slow down for a look, and move on.
The driver apparently parked some distance away and sneaked up on their position. When he kicked in the door, they’d identified themselves as federal agents, whereupon he’d opened fire. They returned fire and shot him to death.
A fingerprint check identified the shooter as Armand Wilson, 37, recently migrated from Michigan, with an arrest record going back to his juvenile days. He had never been convicted, however, because witnesses either changed their stories or didn’t show up to testify in court.
The state police lab matched the bullets that killed Wilson to Haskel’s and Reilly’s weapons. Reilly’s shot would’ve stopped him—a center body-mass hit—but Haskel had nailed him through the heart and head, dead center. Either bullet would’ve done the job.
The Wisconsin pathologist who’d done the autopsy for the state police hadn’t been able to add anything to what he’d put in the autopsy report. Wilson had been in relatively good shape ante mortem. Cause of death—GSWs to brain and heart; manner of death—homicide, apparently justifiable.
The investigating officers had found the gunman’s vehicle, an SUV with a plow attached, parked a quarter mile down the road. Wilson apparently hijacked it several hours earlier after shooting the owner.
Minorini questioned Reilly and Haskel separately.
Haskel refused to be specific. “The son of a bitch drew on us, so we drilled him. Period.”
Reilly’s story was more detailed.
“We told the shooter to drop his weapon. He opened his eyes wider, as if he’d just seen the devil, and he screamed, ‘Fuckin’ double cross.’ There was an exchange of fire. We both shot at him. According to the lab, Haskel’s the one who got lucky.”
“Then what happened?”
“He fell. We closed in and disarmed him, but he was obviously dead.”
“Who else was there?”
“Just Haskel and me.”
So Haskel had killed him.
Minorini spent the next twenty-four hours checking all his sources, trying to find someone—anyone—with the motive and opportunity—or bankroll—to kill Dossi. Nothing.
Dossi, sixty-three had been a retired investment counselor living off the interest and dividends from his portfolio. His bank was a conservative establishment and squeaky clean, and while declining to give specifics, the bank manager assured Minorini that Dossi had acquired his wealth over a period of forty years.
But that’s how organized crime did it, laundering the proceeds from drugs or vice or gambling by running the cash through profitable, “legitimate” businesses. It was only if you noticed that a Rogers Park pizza joint was selling more food than the Hard Rock Cafe, or the million-dollar car wash was located in a neighborhood where most of the cars were abandoned, that you’d have a clue. As long as they paid their taxes, no one was going to notice.
Now that Dossi was dead, several informants were willing to venture that the mobster had been responsible for no fewer than nine hits—but they knew of none recently. Nobody’d ever heard of him botching a job or failing to fulfill his part of a contract. It was eerie, Haskel remarked, how quiet everybody was, really.
Wilson was from Detroit, so Minorini called a detective he knew there.
“Tell me about Armand Wilson.”
Jake Splinter said, “What’s he up to these days?”
“You know, there’s a whole country here, outside Detroit. All kinds of things happening.” Splinter laughed. “Wilson opened fire on a couple of Federal employees and got himself killed for his efforts.”
“I always figured he’d come to a bad end. He was one of our more interesting lowlifes. Shoot his own mother if the price was right. You ever meet him?”
“Just in the postmortem pictures.”
“He was actually black—passing. Father must’ve been white. His mother was from Jamaica. Grew up in a very nasty neighborhood.”
“Bottom line, what was his deal?”
“Got into a lot of trouble as a youth. I’m sure you’ve seen his rap sheet.”
“Yup.”
“Somewhere along the line he got smart or got a handler. He’s rumored…was rumored to be an enforcer, but no one would go on record…He had one peculiarity, though. He’d never shoot a kid, or kill anyone in front of their kid.”
“He have a preferred MO?”
“Liked to gain entry by posing as a delivery guy, or landscapes or repair man, then blast away with a 9-millimeter at close range.”
“Thanks, Splinter.”
What landscapers did in the winter was plow snow.
Minorini was getting ready to call it a day when Haskel ambled in and parked his butt on the desk.
“You been awfully quiet all day, Paul. You POed ’cause someone did you out of the pleasure of nailing Dossi?”
“No. Just thought I’d have a better chance of solving this thing if I put some time in on it.”
“Well, maybe this’ll help.” He handed Minorini a fax. “Highland Park just sent us this list of motorists that were seen in the area at the time. You’ll never guess who’s on it.”
“Tell me.”
“The very judge who gave us the wiretap!”
“No shit!”
“He’s not our shooter, though.” Minorini waited for him to el
aborate. “He has Parkinson’s. Which explains his waiving of the ‘all rise’ bit in his courtroom. He couldn’t hit a barn door with a shotgun—hands shake too much. The cops checked with his doctor.”
“So what was he doing there?”
“Wouldn’t say. Won’t talk to us. We’re checking his prints against the unidentified latents they found at Dossi’s.”
“He went along with that?”
“Not exactly. We had him look at a photo lineup to see if he’d noticed any of the subjects hanging around his neighborhood. They were very clean photos.”
And the judge left his prints all over them.
Haskel grinned. “If we get a hit, we’ll let him explain to a grand jury.”
By the time the fingerprint report came back—a match—Minorini had asked Butler to let him interview the judge without Haskel.
“Why?” Butler demanded.
“He’s aggressive and sarcastic, and I don’t think that’ll get us anywhere with His Honor. He’s too used to dealing with lawyers. The Marshal’s Office will want in on this anyway. Let me see if I can arrange for one of them to do this with me, maybe Reilly. I know she can keep her claws sheathed.”
The cases the judge had been scheduled to hear that day had all been reassigned to another judge without explanation, the reassignments posted on his courtroom door. Minorini and Reilly tracked him to his office suite, where Minorini showed his identification to the clerk guarding the door to the judge’s chambers, and she buzzed them in.
“We need to talk to the judge,” he told her.
When she reached for the phone, Reilly put a hand on it, preventing her from picking it up. Minorini walked over and tapped on the judge’s door. When he heard, “Who is it?” he pushed the door open and stepped into the room. Reilly followed.
The judge was standing at the window, back to the door. His right hand, resting on the window sill, was trembling; his left, hanging at his side, shook so violently he seemed to be tapping a beat against his leg.
The Fall Page 15
