Now it was imperative. Kennedy recognized something in himself that he thought had died. Hatred. Russell Andrew Garrett had earned the hatred of Gennarro Kennedy. He would regret it.
Garrett was going to die. He would be killed by Kennedy. Personally. For damaging the plans Kennedy had made. For being the cause of Lindy’s death. For thwarting Kennedy.
But he’d do more than die. He would be used to repair the plans he’d been trying to destroy. Kennedy toyed with the idea of letting Garrett have his head, letting him go ahead and find David Laird, that other monkey wrench in his beautiful works, then killing them both together.
Kennedy crushed out his cigarette, lit another. The match light revealed a scowl on his face.
It wouldn’t work. Garrett might find out too much on the way to Laird, things he might pass along, to the further inconvenience of Gennarro Kennedy. Garrett apparently had friends. Even Negro friends, it seemed—witness the man in the hospital. He also had police friends and baseball friends ...
Kennedy began to smile. Garrett’s baseball friends. Exactly. A diversion. Something to keep their minds off David Laird.
Alone in the darkness Gennarro Kennedy started to chuckle.
Yes, perfect. A diversion, and something for Garrett to puzzle over right to the moment Kennedy killed him. Something that would take the case in an entirely new direction and leave Kennedy free to deal with Laird, wherever he might be, at his leisure.
Kennedy looked at his idea from all angles, cherished it; loved it, most of all for its symmetry. In my end is my beginning, he thought.
He would go back to the start, back to the idea that had inadvertently done in Rex Simmons, and this time do it right. It would be done right because he would do it himself. There could be no failure with no underlings to knock the plan off kilter.
For the second time Gennarro Kennedy began to plot the assassination of Mickey Mantle.
Chapter Six
Curveball
1
“OH, LORD, RUSS,” JENNY Laird said. “I’m glad to see you.”
Garrett was astonished, more surprised than he’d been when she pulled the shotgun on him. Jenny Laird had been far from Garrett’s greatest fan when he’d left for Kansas City; now she looked almost as glad to see him as his mother had been.
It was his second warm welcome in a row; he didn’t know which one had been more surprising.
It was Thursday, September 3. Garrett had arrived in New York from Kansas City early yesterday, gone immediately to Port Chester, and slept something over sixteen hours, fourteen of which had been nightmares.
First thing this morning he’d gone to Bronx Homicide to fill Murphy in. Garrett figured it would be an unparalleled chance for Vicious Aloysius to live up to his nickname, but the captain passed it up.
Instead, Murphy expressed concern over Martin (whose injuries he’d already heard about from the Kansas City police), and over Garrett, who assured him he was all right. Murphy told Garrett there had been no progress in the investigation.
“Zero. Nothing. Except maybe one stupid little development you’ll be interested in. Unless you really have stirred something up with this David Laird crap—and the violence out there means something.”
“They were out to kill me, Captain,” Garrett told him. “The girl was killed. Martin almost bought a ranch, too—so to speak—though Hal Keating told me on the phone this morning the doctors say he’s going to be all right. I’m not saying it has to be somebody I met out in Kansas City, you know. I haven’t exactly been keeping my ideas secret.”
Murphy looked disgusted. “I know you haven’t. That was inconsiderate, Garrett.”
“Oh, gee, well, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, right. Look, I started checking into this Laird business as soon as you told me about it. I didn’t believe it, but it was part of my job.”
“Did you find anything? Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t have to check with you every time I fart, do I? I thought your idea was stupid, and I didn’t want you to go off half-cocked. I would have been better off whistling jigs to a milestone.” Murphy suddenly smiled. “My mother used to say that.”
Garrett carefully stifled any remarks he might have wanted to make about Murphy’s mother. After a few seconds, very quietly, he asked, “Did you find anything on Laird?”
Murphy kept smiling for a while, then said, “What? Oh, no. Not yet.”
Garrett was faintly encouraged. “You’re going to keep looking, then?”
“I’d be a sap if I stopped, wouldn’t I? With one of my men in the hospital and people getting killed? I swear, Garrett, you were touted to me as some kind of egghead, but I’m beginning to have my doubts.”
Garrett frowned. “Two points. One, you damn well weren’t touted by me about my being an egghead; and two, you asked for me, I didn’t volunteer. I would just as soon have passed.”
“Hmph. Wouldn’t we all.” Murphy loosened his tie. “I just keep telling myself it’s going to be winter someday, and I’ll wish it was hot again. At least the opera’s going in the winter.
“But the thing about your shooting off your mouth,” the captain went on as though they’d never worst left the subject, “is the bind that puts me in now.”
Garrett wanted to know what he meant.
“You say somebody’s trying to kill you,” Murphy said. “Okay, what if someone is? It could be Laird. It could be somebody trying to protect Laird. It could be somebody who wants to get a shot at Laird first. Or—and this is my personal opinion—it could be somebody who wants us to spend our time jerking off over Laird, someone who knows he is dead, to keep us from following up lines of investigation that will lead to him. Sort of a red herring. Like all that Communist bullshit.”
Murphy paused to take a breath. Garrett thought it over. That argument was one he hadn’t thought of; Garrett was beginning to suspect the captain deserved his reputation.
“Killing me is quite a distance to go for a smoke screen, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Murphy replied. “And Kansas City is quite a distance to find you, ’cause how’d he know you’d be there to set you up? But Christ, Garrett, look at this whole business from Simmons’s murder on—the whole thing smacks of somebody who thinks big and has a long reach.”
“You were talking about the spot I put you in,” Garrett said.
“Right. The spot. It’s like this: no matter which of those possibilities is right, I still can’t launch a full-scale investigation of Laird’s possible whereabouts. And liveabouts—I can’t even go heavy on if he’s alive.”
“Because my odds are better,” Garrett put in, nodding, “if whoever tried to kill me thinks ...”
“Right; that I don’t believe you.”
Garrett stood up. “I wouldn’t worry about that, Captain. It didn’t seem to discourage him in K.C.”
“I know,” Murphy growled, “and I don’t like it one damned bit.”
“They find out who the leader of the sledgehammer gang was?”
“Yeah, but no big thanks to you and Martin. They managed to make him by part of one fingerprint, which was all they had left. The rest was pretty well barbecued. I understand Kansas City is famous for that.”
Garrett said nothing.
“Guy’s name was Edward Williams, known in K.C. as Chicago Ned. Hit the Midwest, moved around. Illinois, Indiana, St. Louis, Omaha, Kansas City. Yellow sheet so long you could keep it on a roll, like toilet paper. Strictly hired muscle. A contractor. Somebody’d approach him to rough up somebody else; he’d either do it himself or hire help. So the cops out there are rounding up his usual pals, but you and Martin managed to kill the one guy who could have told you anything. Not that anybody’s going to talk.”
“My heart is breaking,” Garrett said.
“Yeah, well, the cops out there might have a little leverage if they’d had a witness who’d hung around to identify people.”
“I thought about that,
Captain. And I wouldn’t recognize anybody. All I could see was the man with the hammer. I was trying very hard not to wet my pants. I didn’t want to be killed.”
Murphy looked at Garrett, then laughed and slapped him on the back. “Nobody does, Garrett, nobody does. I remember the first time somebody got the drop on me. One of Frank Nitti’s boys—I had just stumbled across a truck loaded with enough Canadian booze to fill the Met to the third balcony. He had a gun like an artillery piece. I was lucky enough to have another cop come by and rescue me. And I did wet my pants.” He laughed again.
“Oh,” he went on. “Speaking of being killed, that little development I mentioned: I heard from your friends up at Yankee Stadium.”
“What’s up?”
“Your friend Mickey Mantle got a death threat a couple of days ago.”
2
“I got a photostat of it right here,” the captain said. “Want to see it?”
Garrett said, “Sure.” Murphy opened a folder on his desk and got it out. Garrett took the slick, dirty-gray paper and read it.
The photostat showed an envelope and a letter, typewritten, badly. The envelope was addressed simply to MICKEY MANTLE, YANKEE STADIUM, Bronx, New York, and bore a Boston, Massachusetts, postmark and a three-cent stamp.
The message itself began “HELLO ... MICKEY,” and warned Mantle not to play against the Red Sox in the series beginning next Monday, September 7. “Don’t show you face in Boston again, or you’re baseball career will come to and end with a 32 ...” the letter said. “This ain’t no joke if you think it is.” It was signed, “yours untruly, a loyal RED SOX fan.”
There was a postscript, but that was the gist of it.
“What do you think?” the captain asked.
Garrett shrugged. “Typical,” he said.
The captain looked surprised. “I agree,” he said. “But where the hell do you get to be such an expert on threatening letters?”
Garrett grinned. “I’ve seen a few. Emotions run pretty high over baseball, Captain. Sometimes even high enough for somebody to make an opera over. But that wasn’t what I was thinking. To me, it seemed typical of Red Sox fans. We’re natural enemies, Yankee fans and Red Sox fans. We got Babe Ruth from them, and they never got over it. The last time the Yankees lost the pennant, Boston beat them out and they still couldn’t make it to the World Series.”
“When was that?”
“Nineteen forty-eight.”
“Jesus,” the captain said. “I can see where they might get homicidal.”
“Or want to be,” Garrett added. “A letter like this comes through the commissioner’s office every so often. First one I know of directed at Mickey, though. How’s he taking it?”
“He ain’t turning cartwheels over it, but he ain’t running for cover, either. Hell, I’d be upset myself if I got one of these things, but it looks pretty much like another stupid crank.”
“Not as stupid as he pretends to be,” Garrett said.
Murphy scratched his cheekbone and looked at Garrett. “Go on,” he said.
“He makes plenty of mistakes in the letter,” the younger man said, “but they’re so inconsistent. Look at this one sentence—‘Don’t show you face in Boston again or you’re baseball career will come to and end with a 32.’
“I don’t believe it. He wants to say the word your twice and gets it wrong both times, in two different ways. I would think a mistake like this would be consistent, wouldn’t you? ‘You face’ followed by ‘you’re career’ doesn’t add up. Especially since later on he says Ive got a good gang’ and so on. Sure, it’s illiterate to leave the apostrophe out, but it would be even more illiterate and lots more natural to say ‘I got a good gang.’ I know people with diplomas who say ‘I got.’ I think the writer is pulling our leg a little.”
“Maybe you got—excuse me. Maybe you’ve got a brain after all, Garrett. That is also typical of threatening letters. The idiots who write them pretend to be even stupider than they are, figuring the police will go after an illiterate instead of a smart person like they are. Which always fails. Like I said. Stupid cranks.” Murphy narrowed his eyes. “Unless you don’t happen to agree with me.”
“No, it looks like crank work to me. It’s just that when you pulled it out, I thought it had something to do with the congressman’s murder.”
“Nah. I just wanted you to see it because the kid is a friend of yours. Anyway, we’ve passed it along to the Boston cops. They’ll do what they have to to protect him.”
“Right. I’ll tell our security people at Mr. Frick’s office, if the Yankees haven’t told them already. If it’s okay with you, that is.”
“Sure,” Murphy said. Garrett got his hat from the rack and put it on. When he had his hand on the door, the captain said, “What are you going to do now, Garrett?”
“Keep on looking for Laird, I guess.”
Murphy laughed again. “I figured that’s what you were going to say. Can I stop you?”
“I doubt it. They’ve already tried to kill me over it, whoever they are. What have I got to lose? Besides, I might do some good.”
“The terrible thing about this whole situation is that you just might, goddammit.” Captain Murphy took a breath and planted his fists on the desk. “Okay, Garrett, here’s the way it’s going to be. My office is going to get a phone call from you every two hours when you’re away from your home or office. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll call out the cavalry. A two-hour-old trail can’t be too hard to follow; might even catch up with you in time to save your fool life.”
Garrett felt embarrassed. He felt like a teenager who had to be home a half-hour earlier than all the rest of the kids. “Captain,” he said, “I don’t really think that’s going to be necessary ...”
Murphy wasn’t having any. “Just do it, starting two hours from the time you walk out that door.”
“What happens if I forget?” Garrett wanted to know.
“If you forget, a squad of cops shows up at your office, or your home, or Yankee Stadium, or wherever the hell you’re supposed to be, and starts looking for you. It’ll make for a lot of embarrassing questions when you finally turn up.”
Garrett cocked his head. “You’re really serious about this, aren’t you? Never mind, I can see you are. Okay, Captain, you win.” Garrett looked at his watch. “I make it twenty-five after eleven. You will hear from me at, to make it neat, one thirty and every two hours after that. Do I have to speak to you personally, or should I talk to anyone who answers the phone?”
“Anybody who answers,” the captain told him. “I’ve got better things to do than to wait around here all day for the phone to ring.”
3
Traffic had been bad into Queens, so the two hours were almost up when Garrett arrived at Jenny Laird’s cottage. Her warm welcome solved a problem for him; he had wondered how he was going to induce her to let him use the phone. As it was, he just asked. Jenny looked puzzled but said of course, go right ahead. Garrett got the operator on the line and placed a call to Captain Murphy—collect.
“What was all that?” Jenny asked when he was through.
“I had some trouble out in Kansas City; Captain Murphy is worried.”
Jenny bit her lip. Garrett noticed how nice her lips were, even now, with no lipstick on them. She was dressed casually, in a blouse and slacks, and looked much too young to be the mother of three.
“I’m worried, too, Russ,” she said.
“What’s the matter?”
“I think I’m being—I think someone is following me. Not all the time, but often.”
“Oh,” Garrett said. “It’s probably the police. Or maybe the FBI. I’m sorry to bring this up, but there’s still evidence pointing to your husband, you know.”
She shook her head. “It’s not the police. Russ, sit down. You’re the only person I can bring myself to tell about this. I ... I don’t have any evidence or anything ...”
She led him to the same chair he had sat in the w
eek before. “It’s not the police,” she said again. She sat down.
“Russ, I’m sorry. I was unforgivably horrible to you. And it wasn’t because your idea about David’s being alive was so outlandish; it was because it wasn’t. It was too much for me to face; I loved my husband. It hurt too much to lose him. I don’t want to think of him—no, no, that’s not right.” She was getting flustered, talking rapidly. “I hated the idea of his being alive and doing mean things; he never hurt anyone when I knew him. He—I mean the idea of David’s coming back after all this time, but not coming to me, coming to ... kill people, getting revenge on them, was too much for me to face. That’s why I shut you out. You were trying to make me face it.
“But now I have to face it.”
“Why?” Garrett asked. His voice was very soft.
Tears came to Jenny Laird’s eyes, big ones that welled up and spilled down her cheeks almost before Garrett could be aware of them.
Jenny sniffled some words.
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
“I’ve seen him!” Jenny practically screamed it. “I’ve seen my husband! David is the one who’s been following me!”
4
Garrett pulled his Kaiser into the parking lot of the Samuel Tilden rest area, switched off the ignition, and turned to the woman beside him. “Okay,” he said. “This is where you saw him first, right?”
Jenny seemed pale and nervous. She bit her lip. “No, this is where I felt him—I had an uncanny feeling he was around.” She shuddered. “I’d been thinking over what you’d said, and ... Oh, damn it, I just can’t say it without sounding stupid!”
“Don’t worry about how you sound. Just tell me.”
“I don’t even think I understand it myself, now, but at the time—this was last Monday—the uncertainty of it was driving me crazy. I was snapping at the children, driving them crazy, too, I guess.
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