The Silent Hour

by Michael Koryta

  "I hope Mike sits next to you," I said as we took our seats.

  "He's that big—"

  "Three hundred at least."

  "That's not tiny."

  "I knew a guy who worked a surveillance with him once, said Mike brought this feed bag of beef jerky along, like five pounds of the stuff. Went through that in the first hour, then spent the rest of the night bitching about how hungry he was. Guy said the longer the surveillance went on, the less he liked the way Mike looked at him, started to feel like he was out with the Donner Party."

  Ken smiled as he leaned back from the table, stretched out his long legs, and crossed his feet at the ankles. "What's your best surveillance story— Or worst experience, rather. Those usually make the best stories."

  "That's easy. I was in an unmarked car by myself not long after I switched to narcotics and started working with Joe. This is early on, and Joe was something of a legend, so I'm trying to impress, right— Well, it's February, bad snowstorm had just blown through, left it cold as a bastard, and my lovely and charming fiancé—yes, I was engaged, and no, it didn't stick—she's feeling bad for me and decides to give me a present. One of these heated pads for the car seat, you plug it into the cigarette lighter. I was embarrassed by the damn thing since it didn't exactly feed the tough-guy image I was trying to cultivate. I threw it in the car, though, because I didn't want to hurt her feelings.

  "So, the night of this surveillance, we sit on the guy's house for hours, and nothing happens. Started in late afternoon, and now it's two in the morning and our guy hasn't moved, which means neither have we. It's getting colder and colder, just crawling into my bones, you know, and I figure, hell, might as well use her gift for a little while, just long enough to warm up. I plugged it in for maybe twenty minutes. Half hour at best."

  Ken's smile widened as he saw where I was headed.

  "Thing warms me up, and now I understand why—it must have been burning watts like a set of stadium lights. I unplug it about an hour before our guy moves. He comes out of the house and gets into his car, and I think, finally, and turn the key."

  "Click," Ken said, and laughed.

  I nodded. "Click. Absolutely no juice, battery's dead. So I have to get on the radio with Joe and say, uh, our boy's in motion, but I can't tail him until I get a jump."

  "You tell him what killed the battery—"

  "Hell no. You kidding me— I spent the next three weeks bitching about the shitty unmarked cars they gave us. Joe still doesn't know the truth about that one."

  "Nice."

  "All right, your turn," I said.

  "You'll like this—worst surveillance I ever went on was a fake surveillance."

  "A fake surveillance—"

  "I have—had, rather—a brother in law who I simply could not stand. He was older than my wife, had the protective big brother thing going on, but he was also just a dick, you know— Owned a car lot, made piles of money, told bad jokes and laughed at them way too loud. Only his own jokes, though. Never cracked a smile at anything anybody else had to say, but when he'd make a joke he always cut up, roared at his own dazzling wit. When we first got married, my patience with him could last about an hour. That's how long I could stand to be in the same room. That time frame diminished over the years."

  "I can imagine."

  "One Friday night my wife informs me that he's coming by for dinner, and I thought, oh, shit, not on a weekend. Because on the weekends he liked to hit the bottle, and when he did that, he lingered longer and laughed louder. So I thought, just tell one little white lie and give yourself a night off. Tell them you have to work, a rush surveillance job came up, and then go sit in a bar and watch a basketball game."

  "Good plan."

  "That's what I thought. When I came home that night, I planned to sell the story to my wife by picking up a tripod and acting real annoyed at this last-minute development. Well, the son of a bitch was already there. He'd shown up early. So he started asking a thousand questions about the surveillance, what it is that I do, all of that. I was edging for the door, he was following me with beer in hand, and just as I was about to escape, he turned to my wife and said, 'Hey, you wouldn't mind if I skipped dinner and tagged along with Ken, would you—'"

  I started to laugh.

  "Yeah," Ken said, nodding. "Of course she agreed to it. So now instead of dealing with this asshole over dinner in my own home, with my wife to distract him, I've got him alone, and in my car."

  "Without any surveillance to do."

  "Exactly. So I thought, well, what the hell can you do at this point but play it out— I drove us to some apartment complex, just picked one at random, and gave him a story about what we were watching for. We sat there for five hours, him drinking and talking and pointing at every car that came and went—'is that them, is that them—'"

  "That's fantastic," I said. "A cautionary tale."

  We traded a few more war stories while we waited. Ken asked if I had a surveillance theme song, and I had to laugh.

  "A theme song— Are you kidding me— You play the Mission Impossible sound track when you're working—"

  "Everybody should have a theme song," he said, unbothered, "and, no, mine's not the Mission Impossible sound track. Song's called 'Cold Trail Blues.' By a guy named Peter Case. Ever heard it—"

  I shook my head.

  "Thing speaks to me," he said with a faint grin. "Speaks about the Cantrells, too. All about some guy searching through the gloom, wondering if he'll ever find what he's looking for. Thinking it's too late, and he's too far behind."

  "If that's your theme song," I said, "it's no damn wonder that you haven't found Alexandra yet. Encouraging shit."

  His smile was hollow. "I'll burn you a copy."

  When Mike finally entered, it was twenty past twelve. He wedged in through the door, lumbered across the room, extended his hand, and set to work crushing my fingers. A Mike London handshake was both a greeting and a warning, I always thought.

  "How are you, Mike—"

  "Hungry. I am hungry, Lincoln, my boy." He turned and cast an interrogator's stare down at Ken. "You're Pennsylvania—"

  "Ken Merriman."

  "From Pennsylvania," Mike said, as if that dismissed any need for Ken to have a name. A location would suffice. He dropped into the chair beside Ken and heaved his bulk up to the table's edge. I saw Ken trying to slide closer to the wall to make room for him, and I had to hide a grin.

  "The way we got to Bertoli," I began, but Mike lifted a hand to silence me.

  "I need a menu and a waitress. Then you can tell me all that shit."

  We got him a menu and a waitress, and once the food was ordered he drained his glass of water as if it were a shot and said, "All right, get to it."

  "Ken was hired by the parents of Joshua Cantrell a while back," I said. "Do you remember that story—"

  "Guy went missing with his wife and was found last winter."

  "That's him, yeah. We're trying to figure out how he ended up dead and in Pennsylvania, and where the wife went."

  "We— How'd you get involved—"

  It froze me for a moment, and even Ken gave me an odd look, because it shouldn't have been that difficult a question to answer. Eventually I forced a grin and said, "Just doing what I do, Mike. Just doing what I do."

  His eyebrows knit together, as if he thought it was a bullshit answer or at least a strange one, and then he said, "Whatever. None of my business. Let's hear the questions."

  "Seems the Cantrells were involved in an offender reentry program, had a bunch of parolees working out at their place, and Bertoli was one of them," I said. It was a cursory version, certainly, but that's all I wanted to give him right now. He didn't need to know about Harrison or Graham or Dunbar. Not yet.

  "He was," Mike said, nodding his enormous head. He'd grown a beard since I'd last seen him, which added even more size. "You probably know that their vanishing act was almost simultaneous with Bertoli getting whacked."

&nbs
p; "You say getting whacked," Ken said. "That's the perspective we've heard from some others, too, but the cause of death was given as an accident."

  "That's right."

  "Well, why wasn't there an investigation, if the evidence pointed to homicide—"

  "There was an investigation, friend. I ran it. As for the death ruling, you got to look at physical evidence. That's the key. And the physical evidence didn't point to a homicide, necessarily. Guy took a fall off a warehouse, clipped his head on a Dumpster, then bounced off the pavement, and turned his face inside out. Nasty way to go, but the cause of death was the fall. That's something I won't dispute. Whether he took that fall willingly… I have strong feelings about that, but my strong feelings weren't going to get the cause of death changed. Fall killed him. What triggered the fall, we couldn't say for sure. No physical evidence to suggest that anybody pitched him off the roof. Someone could have, and probably did, but we couldn't prove that."

  "There's an FBI agent named John Dunbar," I said, "who knew a hell of a lot about what was going on with Bertoli. Did he approach you—"

  Mike smiled. "Oh, you know Dunbar, eh—"

  "Uh-huh. You have some problems with him—"

  "Not exactly. He was cooperative as hell once Bertoli was dead, but more hindrance than help. He might not have realized it, but other people did."

  "What do you mean—"

  "Dunbar told you what, exactly— About Bertoli—"

  "That he was a potential witness against Dominic Sanabria, and Dunbar was working with Joshua Cantrell to get information out of him."

  "He mention that he was retired at the time—"

  "What—"

  "Yeah, Lincoln. Dunbar was retired from the Bureau when all this shit went down. Everything he told you about his plan with Bertoli and Cantrell is accurate, but it was also unofficial. The Feds had no idea what was going on, because he wasn't working for them anymore. There was no law enforcement involvement, period. Dunbar's idea was that he'd go to them when he had something to show. Didn't pan out, did it—"

  My disbelief turned quickly to understanding. The previous day I'd had trouble believing that the FBI could have implemented such a ludicrous plan, placing Bertoli in the home of Sanabria's sister and using Cantrell as an informant. Now I understood—the FBI hadn't implemented the plan. It had been Dunbar and Cantrell, working alone.

  "That makes sense," I said. "Hell, that's the only way it makes sense. The whole idea was insane. If they never approved it, that means—"

  "He was running his own show with Cantrell," Mike said. "Which tells you two things. One, the only official version is the one Dunbar provided, because everybody else who was involved is dead or missing, and, two, the man had a king-sized hard-on for Dominic Sanabria. I mean, he turned Sanabria into a retirement project— Pro bono prosecution— Crazy shit."

  Ken said, "So everything Dunbar did with Cantrell was completely—"

  "Unsupervised," Mike said. "Yes. When Bertoli took his header off the roof—with or without assistance—and Dunbar came forward with his story, you can imagine how elated his Feeb buddies were. Then the Cantrells bailed, and the whole thing started to smell even worse."

  "So they squashed the investigation—" I said. "Are you kidding me— To protect Dunbar—"

  "I wouldn't say that they squashed it, really. I mean, I did work the case for a while, and worked it hard. We couldn't get anything convincing to go on. Everybody understood that Sanabria probably had the guy killed, but we couldn't get a lead to work with. Bertoli was a piece of shit anyhow, nobody was crying over his loss, and the last thing the FBI wanted was Dunbar's story going public. Wouldn't have been anything criminal, but it also wouldn't have made them look good. A rogue retiree placing informants without anybody's knowledge, and then the informant gets killed— No, that wouldn't have made them look good."

  "Nobody thought it was worth looking for the Cantrells—"

  "We looked."

  "Not very forcefully," Ken said. "The police told his family that they wouldn't investigate. Told them—"

  "Cantrells left of their own volition. That's the way it looked at the time, at least. Packed a bunch of shit into storage and made arrangements for the house. There was no sign that one of them had been killed. Not until the body showed up."

  "You said you worked the Bertoli case hard," I said.

  "I did. Even if the death ruling wasn't a homicide, we treated it like one as soon as Dunbar came forward. You have to give the guy that much credit, too—at least he showed up and told the truth when Bertoli got killed. A lot of people wouldn't have the balls to do that. He had to know it wasn't going to go over well with his buddies at the Bureau. Took some swallowed pride to come forward, I'm sure."

  "You never got anything that showed a connection between his death and Sanabria, though—"

  "I got something, but it was weak. It wasn't enough to build a case on." He stopped talking as the waitress passed nearby and eyed her tray hopefully, then sighed with disappointment when she delivered the food to the table beside us.

  "What did you get—" I said.

  "Lasagna and—"

  "Not the food, Mike. I mean on the case. What was the connection—"

  "Oh, right. Well, there was a place across from the warehouse where Bertoli died that had parking lot surveillance cameras. It didn't show the scene, but it caught cars coming and going. Problem was, the street was fairly busy. In just one hour around Bertoli's time of death, there were sixty-two cars on the tape. I got all the plate numbers I could, ran registrations."

  This was the sort of work ethic that Mike was famous for, a determined pursuit of any angle, no matter how long the odds.

  "I got one car, and one car only, that had some possibility," he said. "A tricked-out Oldsmobile Cutlass, all sorts of custom shit on it, spinners and crap like that. The plate ran back to a Darius Neloms. Big D, as he is generally known."

  I shook my head. "Doesn't mean anything to me."

  "There's a bunch of Neloms in East Cleveland, and the whole family is nothing but pushers and hustlers. Darius runs a body shop over on Eddy and St. Clair."

  "Tough neighborhood."

  "You ain't kidding. These days, Big D's doing well for himself. Making money putting in hydraulics and fancy rims and stereos, all the toys that the young thugs like, makes 'em feel like they're in a rap video. There was a time, though, when he took a bust for running a chop shop. Taking in stolen cars, repainting them, adding some window tint, maybe changing the headlights or the grille, and sending 'em back out. He didn't take a hard fall because they had trouble proving he knew the cars were stolen. I'm sure that was crap, but the guys bringing him the cars worked for Dominic Sanabria and a guy named Johnny DiPietro."

  "Later murdered," I said, "and Dunbar thinks it was by Sanabria, and Bertoli was a witness."

  "You got it."

  "You think Sanabria hired this Darius guy to kill Bertoli—" Ken asked.

  "No way," Mike said. "He would've handled that in-house."

  "It was his car at the scene."

  "It was registered to him. One of about nine vehicles he had registered to him or his shop. When Bertoli died, Darius was at a party at a nightclub, which I verified by their security tapes."

  "So maybe it's a meaningless connection," Ken said.

  "Could be, but Darius Neloms was connected to Dominic Sanabria and Johnny DiPietro, had gone to jail for working with them on stolen cars in the past. If somebody in their crew wanted to borrow a car, Darius was a likely source."

  "Why in the hell would they borrow a car," I said, "instead of stealing one—

  Mike smiled. "Look at the result. I spent time chasing leads on Darius—and don't kid yourself into thinking the Italians viewed him as some sort of compatriot. A bunch of racist fucks, those guys. They're not above working with a black guy to bring in some dollars, but they damn sure aren't going to worry about redirecting police his way, either."

  "You talk to
Darius—"

  "Uh-huh, and got nothing. 'I own lots of cars, lots of people have access to them cars, no way I could possibly remember who might've been driving that car on that night.'"

  "What was your sense of him—"

  "That he was lying, of course—but was he lying with a real purpose— Guy like Darius Neloms, he doesn't necessarily need the extra motivation to lie to me. See a badge, lie to the badge."

  "So that's where the case died—"

  "That's where it died. I ran that up the ladder, you know, showing there was at least a weak link between one of the cars and Sanabria, but of course it wasn't enough. No evidence for a homicide, nobody talking to us, the FBI boys embarrassed by the whole thing because of Dunbar, it's almost surprising I got that far with it."

  I saw the waitress headed our way again and figured this time the food would be ours, and that meant Mike wasn't going to be answering any more questions for a while. Best to slide in one more while I had his attention.

  "A few minutes ago you made a good point, saying that Dunbar's version is the only official one, since the whole damn circus he put together was so unofficial."

  Mike nodded, waiting.

  "So I'm wondering—did you believe that version— That one unsupported but also unconfirmed version—"

  Mike said, "Look, Dunbar was one of a group of FBI guys that did some righteous work on the mob around here. Put a lot of those boys in prison."

  "But—"

  "But Dunbar also wore a suit every day, and one of the rules I've developed after twenty years at this game, Lincoln, is never trust a man in a suit."

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Amazing, the way one fact can change your entire perception of something.

  John Dunbar was retired at the time he launched his plan with Bertoli and Cantrell— Nobody else approved it, or even knew about it— Yeah, that changed things.

  His plan had been terrible, too, a perversion of an old cop game that had never worked well in my experience—planting a snitch in a jail cell. There were plenty of narcs in the prison system, and it was a tactic that had been used for decades, generally off the books, and rarely well. The problem was that the snitches lied, that they had no credibility in court, and that the targets were rarely anywhere near as stupid as required for the tactic to work. Joshua Cantrell had effectively played the role of a jail cell snitch in his own home, welcoming Bertoli in and trying to talk to him about a mob hit. Made it a great deal more difficult to be sneaky about that sort of thing when your wife was the sister of the suspect. They could have concealed that from Bertoli initially—and surely did, otherwise I couldn't imagine he'd have actually agreed to the parole assignment—but eventually it would have had to surface, wouldn't it—